DaySailer.org Forum

I've owned a Torqeedo 1003 long shaft for about eight months, and finally got a chance last week to try it this week on Lake Tahoe. (I wouldn't have spent the money, but it was free; long story, which I'll tell if anyone's interested.)

Some good points, some bad points.

Performance: The top speed reading steadied out at 5.6 mph on the integral GPS. That's with about 500 pounds of people and stuff in the boat. Indicated remaining time at that speed, with the battery at 87%, varied from 0.3 to 0.7 hours. (And by the way, it dropped from 98% to 87% in about a half hour of intermittent, mostly low-speed operation.) I'll be able to test it again later this year, and this time I'll be close enough to the marina that I'll be able to hold it at full throttle for a while to see if the top speed increases or the time remaining reading steadies out.

Range: Short at high speed (see above). At 0.9 mph, 17 hours. At 1.7 mph, 10 hours. At 2.5 mph, 4 hours. At 3.5 mph, which you need to push through the powerboat wakes on Tahoe, 2 hours. (These are approximate averages; the speed and time indicators kept jumping around). The indicated ranges on the Torqeedo website are pretty close to what I got, but my boat’s weight was nowhere near the 1.5 tons they mention as the upper capacity limit for the 1003. It's possible to charge the motor’s battery while the motor is in use, using 12-volt batteries and an inverter. This seems like a good use for my now-redundant trolling motor batteries, so I hope to get that set up before the next sail to find out how much range the auxiliary batteries add.

Weight: About 30 pounds, 10 pounds of battery and 20 pounds of motor. It's very easy to separate the battery from the motor, and the battery has a built-in carrying handle, so installing and removing the motor is a snap. It’s also extremely easy to tilt and lock up out of the way when you’re ready to sail.

Steering: It’s impressively easy to steer the boat using just the Torqeedo. On our way to the marina launch ramp to go home, I didn’t install the rudder and just used the motor to steer. It doesn’t have the infamous “prop walk” problem, where using the motor in reverse makes the boat go sideways. (A friend of ours with a Pearson 323 uses this to get out of his marina, spinning the boat like a top to point it in the right direction.) Sitting on the transom, I was easily able to back out of the slip, turn the boat facing the right way, and motor out to the ramp. It’s easy to make sharp turns, it’s easy to make gradual turns, and it’s easy to move from sharp to gradual and back.

Sound: It’s louder that I expected, maybe as loud as a modern well-muffled outboard that blows its exhaust out underwater. Even at 0.9 mph, it’s much louder than a 55-pound thrust trolling motor at full throttle, with a steady “thrum-thrum” instead of the trolling motor’s constant faint hum. Think of a sewing machine on steroids. No way anyone’s using it as a trolling motor; the fish would head elsewhere.

Reverse/kick-up lock: The motor is free to kick up when it hits something while the boat is moving forward, unless you press the convenient tab that locks it in the down position, which allows you to move quickly in reverse. If you forget to push the tab and use reverse anyway, you’ll be fine until about 0.5 mph, at which point the motor will rise up until it runs out of water. Unlike a trolling motor, though, it won’t try to twist itself off the transom because the shaft is free to swivel, so unless anyone happens to be watching closely, you wont embarrass yourself.

Steering lock: There’s a small plastic pin that fits into the motor and shaft to lock them in the straight-ahead position. Not much use on a Daysailer, since the curve of the transom places the motor at an angle away from straight ahead.

Shaft length: A long-shaft model is a good idea. That’s what I have, and it’s just about long enough. A short-shaft model would probably cavitate, so you’d have to hang it off of the stern on a mount that could be lowered. Direct clamping to the transom is a lot easier, and the tiller is easy to reach.

Thanks for posting this. I've wondered how these expensive motors work in practice.
Last night we tried to back out of a picnic beach on our local lake into a crosswind using a 30lb Minn Kota. The boat was blown sideways into a snag as if the motor weren't there at all. We would like to do more sailing at the coast, but I would hate to find myself going over the bar into the north Pacific with my little Minn Kota trying to fight an ebb tide.
I don't suppose anyone has leads on any other free Torqeedo's . . .

And another thought:

Bring the owner's manual. I got error codes twice and the motor refused to start. The first was probably because I hadn't run through the calibration process recently enough, and the second was probably because I hadn't lined up the motor connector perfectly with the battery (a very easy mistake to make, which has been complained about online by other owners).

In both cases, having forgotten the owner's manual, I worked from memory and disconnected, then reconnected the battery. In both cases, the motor started up promptly. That's not quite the specified procedure in the first case, but what the heck, it worked.

Tested the Torqeedo on Tahoe again last week and this week. It showed off its good points, but it also showed its limited range, especially in headwinds and waves. It works well enough for me because I have a second battery. Otherwise, I'd be looking for a gas or propane outboard.

what range do you get?

For starters, short version of a long story: My company gives length-of-service awards. This one, by longstanding company tradition, is expected to be a nice present you pick for yourself. My initial suggestion, roofing materials so I could redo the garage, was ever-so-politely rejected by my boss as too, I don't know, practical or something. Hence the motor.

Anyway, back to your question...The range is wildly inconsistent. It's very high at low speed, say 0.9 mph with 17 hours to go. Unless it's 12 hours, which it might suddenly become, with no change in speed. It drops in a non-linear way when you crank the throttle. When the next-to-nothing wind kicked up all of a sudden and I decided to head straight into it and run for the marina because the mainsail jammed and we couldn't lower it and the only sail reduction we could do was furl the UPS and the mainsail was flogging enough to intimidate my crew (who, it turns out, is bolder than I am, but more on that later), the available time dropped from about 6 hours to about a quarter hour. The speed, unaided by sail, was about 3 mph according to the motor's GPS. I got it up to 4.2 by tacking just enough to bring the mainsail into use (it looks a lot better filled, and sounds better too), and as we entered the marina, the wind was blocked enough that we could motor in, dock, and strike the mainsail without capsizing (although my crew did have to point out to me that the boom had swung to starboard and the boat was sailing along the dock by itself and it would be a good idea if I solved that problem before she was unable to tie off to the dock cleat and we ran aground on the launch ramp).

The Torqeedo's range indicator has another quirk: When you shut it off because you're just sitting watching the scenery, and then turn it back on and head off at low speed, it will give a remaining time indication of less than an hour at speeds of less than 1 mph. After a few minutes (I suppose because it has to find a GPS signal) it will go back to its reassuring 17, or 12, or whatever, and if you crank it up to 2 mph, it will give you anywhere from 4 to 2 hours.

The one reassuring constant is percentage of battery remaining, which drops in a not-too-rapid, perfectly consistent way.

What's really useful: You can leave it turned on, and if you're moving under sail, give it just enough power not to drag the prop. That way, if you need it instantly, all you need to do is turn the throttle.

It's a lovely motor within its limits, and when we used it one our canoe earlier this month, it got a lot of friendly attention. People at the Tahoe marina didn't notice it in July, but this time they asked about it and remarked about how quiet it was.

And one last thought: If you did get one of these for a Daysailer, I would firmly recommend a 1003 for the bigger battery than the 503, and a long shaft. Our marina slip has about 18 inches of water this time of year, and the motor just cleared the bottom, while at the same being just deep enough not to cavitate. That's clamped directly to the transom.

Thanks for the details.

Range is dependent on speed because of the way the resistance through water works. For some battery types, total charge available is lower if you draw higher currents. (Possibly not a factor for the Torqeedo batteries.) Wind and current can drop the range to zero, or extend it, as you discovered. So there are plenty of non-linear effects, and they would be expected to be more noticeable the closer the maximum power and range are to what you need.

From your description it sounds like your Torqeedo while a bit more powerful than the usual trolling motor, doesn't come as far as having much of an extra power reserve past moving the DS nicely along when it's calm and with the sails down. (Which is pretty good is that's your use case).

Which brings me to the question of why your sail didn't want to come down...

The sail is still a bit of a mystery. It wouldn't go all the way to the top of the mast, even with two people pulling on the halyard.That meant that the bottom end was low, so the boom ended up being all the way down on the stop in the sail track, with the stop adjusted as low as it would go. That in turn meant that with the boom on, we couldn't raise the bottom end of the mast boltrope high enough to clear the sail slot (it folded and jammed while we still needed about two more inches). At the dock, I ended up sliding the boom off the sail, which allowed us to lift and flex the boltrope enough to clear the sail slot, and then we dropped the sail without any problem.

The sail moves easily in the slot, and when I tried it in the driveway just now (with the mast down), it went all the way to the top, with the boltrope contacting the underside of the masthead, using a firm one-handed tug on the halyard. That placed the bottom end of the boltrope about 1/2-inch below the bottom of the sail slot. I placed the boom in the slot, installed the tack pin and tightened the downhaul, and instead of going all the way down to the sail stop, the boom now sits a little over nine inches above it (which would be good - the rascal grazed my head about 18 times).

So I guess the answer is to figure out what prevents the sail from going all the way to the top when the mast is up. Maybe the halyard is kinking, maybe the boltrope is jamming? Anyway, I've got a few months to figure it out.

I occasionally jam the boltrope in the slot, but usually that's immediately noticeable and gets fixed while raising the sail. That said, I had one recent outing where we couldn't get the sail to raise properly and never figured out the cause (we just noticed we couldn't get the wrinkles out of the sail...).

Normally, I hoist the sail, then pull down the boom to its stop (high enough to clear heads, but several inches below the point where it would be pulled up by raising the sail). After that, I may further tension the luff with a Cunningham, as needed.

Do you hoist the sail first, then slide the boom onto its boltrope? I've been doing it the other way (boom onto mast, sail into boom first, then sail into mast slot and hoist). It wouldn't surprise me at all if I've been going about this entirely backwards. In this morning's experiment I hoisted first, then placed the boom in the mast (without putting the sail in the boom slot, and of course the mast was horizontal for whatever effect that may have had), and it worked like a charm.

No, I don't think you were doing it backwards. My sail comes rolled out of the bag. I slide it onto the boom, hook up the boom, unroll the sail and hoist it. De-rigging in reverse.