Practical Sailor's gear and boat reviews take the guesswork out of your buying decisions.

Volume 30
Number 22
November 15, 2004

Trolling Motor as Dinghy Auxiliary

Here's a dinghy-power option that might make sense— if your circumstances permit. It's quiet, clean, and cheap, but also slow, and may lack staying power. We'll keep you posted on that.

With 55 pounds of thrust at full throttle, the Minn-Kota electric motor moves this 70-pound dinghy at nearly four knots—faster than it can be rowed, but not as fast as a gasoline-powered engine would push it. If run at less than full throttle (a slower discharge rate) on a charged, 90-amp-hour, deep-cycle battery, the electric motor should have a couple of hours of run time.

We'll spare you the whole sordid history of our life with outboard engines, but if you heard it, you would agree that we've had more than our share of pain and sorrow. Let's just say that once we had a fine, strong Johnson. It performed magnificently for 20 years. We eventually replaced it with a newer Johnson, for no other reason than that it was newer and shinier. Oh fie, fie upon it. It's been downhill ever since.

The current outboard on our ancient Boston Whaler workboat is a 15-hp, four-stroke Evinrude, pull-started, tiller-steered, with a block made by Suzuki. It's a lovely engine when it happens to be running, and…

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