Kapowai

Kapowai means "A Dragonfly that Darts Across Water" In Maori.   I purchased her in 2001.    She had an Atomic 4 engine and after it quit running several times, at the most inopportune moments.    One day I yanked the Iron Genny out of the boat and then afterward thought, well, What's Next?    Being a marine electrician going to electric drive was the obvious solution, but there were no electric drives available on the marketplace.   I bought a trolling motor, mounted it to the back of the boat and with about 500 watts of power was able to motor around the marina.    The lack of power was a real issue so I purchased a Vetus 2.2 KW inboard drive.   This motor was a direct drive motor, and had completely silent operation which I both liked but found that you could have it on full power and not notice you were going through your batteries.   I then hand built and installed a new motor / gearbox combination.    It worked so well we started marketing the motor as a Propulsion Marine 5 KW drive.   We sold several of these motors before changing to the Electroprop.    Kapowai was the perfect test bed for our motors and this evolved into a 7 KW Cruiser, a water cooled, planetary geared electric drive which is both very quiet and very powerful.   Kapowai will continue to test new drives and is the chosen test bed for our new Parallel Hybrid which is currently being designed.        Kapowai has been a great boat,  she sails beautifully and without an inboard diesel she has a great ambience and is clean throughout.     A variety of pictures and videos of Kapowai have been taken over the years with more to come.   Keep checking back here for what is next to come in the evolution of Marine Propulsion for Sailboats.