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Boat's appeal is electric

This battery-powered 26-footer is quietly turning the heads of boaters tired of hefty big fuel bills.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
Published July 5, 2006

In the maritime world there are engine-revving powerboats, gas-chugging charter boats, shrimpers, cutters, cabin cruisers.

Then there is the boat that Jeff Ganiere built.

Electric-powered. Twenty-six feet long with a mahogany bow and steel hull. And on a recent morning in Tarpon Springs, chugging quietly around Spring Bayou with no visible motor, no hydrocarbons seeping into the water and little fuel burned.

"What a perfect day today," said Ganiere, 60, commandeering Crack O' Dawn through ripples at 6 knots, the party boat's top speed. "That's why we live in Florida."

And then: "Right now we're doing 6 amps, about the same as a microwave oven."

Electric boats are nothing new - they were used industrially as early as the 1920s and can be found at theme parks - but Ganiere, a mechanical engineer who owns 28 patents for things like airport baggage conveyors and dollies that move pianos, says his is special.

The talk of Tarpon Springs' commercial boaters, the cruiser goes forward or reverse with the flip of a switch. It requires a $600, 10-horsepower electric motor. Marine batteries. And to run the motor, a modified computer that converts DC power to AC power, the kind that runs toasters and hairdryers.

Rising fuel costs have taken the profitability out of fishing, Ganiere and others say, and can take the pleasure out of recreational boating.

Can the electric boat save a hard-hit industry?

"Twenty-six? That's a nice-sized boat!" said Ron Wahl, founder of the Sea School in St. Petersburg, when told about Ganiere's ecofriendly vessel.

"I think the time is right," he said. "As we're looking for alternatives with automobiles, getting out in the water and not paying an arm and a leg for fuel makes a lot of sense. ... I'd even think that an opportunity for a rental market would be big for electric boats."

For three decades, Wahl has seen about 6,000 students come through the Sea School each year to get a license, many of them wanting to be charter captains. No one has talked about electric boating, he said.

But with big charter boats burning about 12 gallons of fuel an hour when running at a clip, Wahl says, and gas sometimes priced at $3.50 per gallon at marina pumps, a battery-powered vessel that is also quieter and nonpolluting "sounds like a great investment."

Still, there are questions.

"How long does it take to recharge that sucker?" Wahl asked about Ganiere's boat.

And how far does it run? What about saltwater leaking into the technology?

Ganiere says his boat has a 12-hour running time, with a dozen marine gel cell batteries that take 10 hours to charge. Every day he tests Crack O' Dawn for battery resistance and voltage, to see what works or doesn't.

So far, nothing on the boat has failed, Ganiere said, though he needs to work on keeping the saltwater out of his computer and digital control station. "It's going to crash one of these days. I don't know when."

Meanwhile, he and his wife will cruise out with a bottle of wine, out to the bayou, wave to neighbors.

"This boat isn't meant to cross the Atlantic or anything. Just a little bayou cruiser," he said, talking through the vessel's moderate hum. "We've had 12 people on this thing and had a good party. Go to Anclote Island" - about 10 miles from his slip in Tarpon Springs - "doesn't spend any fuel, come back and recharge."

Ganiere, a former Army demolition specialist and combat engineer in Vietnam, built the hull for Crack O' Dawn a decade ago in Indianapolis. Only until recently did he outfit it with the electric motor and batteries.

And only until recently did he think that his passion for building boats - 14 in all - was a hobby without profit potential.

"Everybody wants no-maintenance houses," said Ganiere, whose latest business is Anchor Archives in Tarpon Springs, a document storage and retrieval business. "I think we should have no-maintenance boats, too."

He says the shrimpers are interested in his electric drive. People constantly ask him for quotes.

"It'd be awful nice to boat around all day for $10 of fuel instead of $200," said Robbie Gause, owner of Gause Built Boats in Tarpon Springs. He is working with Ganiere on building a 30-knot, 26-foot electric vessel, which should be ready by August.

"I'm not sure if it's going to work," Gause said. "I guess time will tell."

But Ganiere said he was optimistic. If he can pull off this higher-powered Gause boat, then that will lead to serious commercial interest in his technology.

"His boat will burn only a teacup of fuel an hour," Ganiere predicted.

[Last modified July 5, 2006, 00:20:05]