Canadian Yachting October 2022 - 42

DIY / TECH
Going Electric to
Cruise Lake Ontario
A family ditches the diesel
W
Story and photos by | Matt Bera
We settled Svala into what
my family and I had come to
think of as the most desirable
anchorage on Lake Ontario, on a sunny
summer afternoon. With an abandoned
settlement, an old schoolhouse full of
swallows, giant snakes and a rum-running
past, Main Duck Island had it all. That we
had to sail past the Psyche Shoal, a magnetic
disturbance, and into the middle of
the rumoured Marysburgh Vortex made
an even better sea story. It had taken us
two attempts, two years, two boats and
a new sort-of experimental engine to get
there.
We had been convinced to turn back on
the same trip almost exactly a year before
when we were delayed and then beaten
back by a series of thunderstorms and
the tail end of a moderately destructive
tornado. I grew up sailing and had some
experience as a youth on sail training
ships, but neither my wife nor my then
9-year-old daughter had ever spent time
on a boat before we bought our much
loved Cherubini Hunter 25 four years
earlier. That boat changed our lives, but as
we paced the dock in Cobourg waiting for
a better wind to take us back to Toronto,
it also occurred to us that we might need
something a little more robust if we hoped
to cruise too far from our home waters in
Humber Bay. As we waited, my eyes kept
turning to what looked like the prettiest
boat in the harbour. A little googling told
me that it was a Contessa 26. A little more
reading convinced me that it was just the
thing we needed to sail the Great Lakes
with a family of 3 or 4. By the Fall we
had found and bought one of our own and
started to refit her.
There were the usual problems with
buying and transporting an older boat, but
the one thing that really worried me was
the inboard diesel engine. I knew that the
10hp Yanmar it came with had a reputation
as a tough and reliable motor, but it scared
me more than a little. I was in my mid 40's
but had never owned a car, motorbike or
powered lawnmower before we got a
2-stroke outboard with the Hunter. My
one non-negotiable condition for buying
42 CANADIAN YACHTING | OCTOBER 2022
Svala at anchor.
a first boat had been that I would not buy
anything with an inboard engine. Even
then we were not very happy and switched
to a propane outboard after we watched a
family of baby ducks slowly expire in oily
water over the course of a weekend.
We didn't buy a sailboat to help pollute
or degrade the lakes, and we talked
vaguely about one day running an electric
engine. It would be clean, quiet, and easy
for someone with no mechanical aptitude
to maintain. On the other hand, it would
be an expensive investment, a little experimental,
and not so easy to charge with no
shore power on our floating mooring at
the Toronto Sailing and Canoe Club.
Our decision was helped along when
we were unable to start or run the diesel
to winterize it despite the advice
and help of sailors that had maintained
similar engines for years. A visit from a
diesel mechanic, a long list of work that
needed to be done, and the fact that the old
engine would need to be pulled out and
re-mounted anyway helped us decide. We
were going electric.
Canadian Yachting October 2022

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