Customer's report:
How it all began:
First, let me introduce myself, my name is Peter Volken Smidt. I am a designer by profession, father of 3 daughters, and I live with my family in Rotterdam, near the Kralingse Plas. Ever since my early youth, I have been an enthusiastic water sports enthusiast, and I always said that with my first salary, I would buy a boat.
That didn't work out unfortunately, but now that the daughters are old enough to swim, I decided in 2019 to look for an affordable sailboat. And I found one, and what a find it was. A neglected Contest30 from the 70s. It perfectly met my wishes. It was a fixer-upper with enough berths to be able to go on holiday with it someday, enough work to make my designer's heart beat faster, and an old Volvo Penta diesel engine that had a leak in the cooling element. Provisionally, when I bought it, I had the engine repaired so that it could reach its home port.
With combined efforts, I worked hard to refurbish the boat. The paint layer of the polyester hull was bad, the underwater hull urgently needed new antifouling, and all the electronics on board dated from a time when incandescent bulbs were the norm. The wiring was old and worn.
Enthusiastically, I began the refit of my new dream boat. Thoroughly, the 30 ft was completely stripped of the old paint layers and then rebuilt with modern paint systems. Inside, the tangle of old electrical wires was replaced with new and safe wiring; now it's LED that rules the roost. Navigation, AIS, wind indicators, NMEA 2000 data cables, the whole kit and caboodle slowly but surely turned the boat into a modern vessel. But there was still one thing that bothered me, that engine. Although the assignment when buying was to patch it up so we could reach Rotterdam, I didn't trust the more than 40-year-old engine; it smoked and stank and got too hot too quickly.
My enthusiasm for the boat was undiminished, so I decided to invest in a different propulsion system. In my ignorance, my search for new propulsion began with traditional engine suppliers. Because the current Volvo engine appeared to be a very compact engine with a short distance between the gearbox, I soon realized that a standard diesel engine would not fit in the current place in the boat. I also noticed that the suppliers were not overly enthusiastic about the conversion project. Annoyed, this made me think.
Slowly but surely, the realization grew that the somewhat old-fashioned diesel could no longer be the fuel in my boat. I wanted to switch to a sustainable alternative. Something I could install myself in the boat, that was space-saving and maintenance-free.
