hello everyone and welcome back to sailing joy this is ed farinelli and this week i will give
you a glimpse of the future and conduct a sea trial on excel 15 an all-electric catamaran
good
the excel catamarans are made by cnd the beneteau group same company that produces the lagoons
this alien catamaran uses the same hole of the lagoon 50 and it was designed to unite performance
and comfort in the same boat they have created now a prototype that have torquato electric engines
powered by lithium batteries i personally had so many questions about it so here you have the data
the kilowatts you are using okay you have the here you see batteries are 95 yeah and you have
all the data and when you are sailing yeah you can put in uh energy mode on the the propeller
rotating will create recharge of the batteries so you will recharge is
i was so curious to know if this boat could actually recharge all the batteries on the go
using only the engine hydro generator it looks like there's a need to use the generators to
recharge its batteries as there are no solar panels installed yet on this boat well long
story short the autonomy of the electric engines were about 60 nautical miles at 6 00 speed and
i was told that the generators would have to be on for two hours to truly recharge the batteries
have you done any uh crossings with the boat so far no no no it was another skipper on the boat
as we were leaving the canal for the sea trial i jumped inside of the xs 15 to check out the
interior space how it actually compared to joy or lagoon 46 and take advantage that the engines were
on to see how noisy they were on the cabins and we are right here inside of the owner's cabin the
engine is on you cannot hear anything uh pretty much just like a see if you can hear that's the
electric engines on it's it's very it's very good the noise that it makes it's not annoying at all
i liked the extra volume of this boat the finish of it seemed much more sportier
lighter color schemes felt that there were much more fiber exposed on the ceiling walls
back on the galley here they designed a l-shaped kitchen on this vessel overall it seemed to have
much less storage than the lagoon 46 and the sink was put in a difficult angle to wash dishes
on the other hall you can also hear the engine a little bit electric engines it is
not it's not annoying at all and very very different than combustion type of engine
so you can pretty much sleep uh whenever the engines are on
time for the test sale
down
sales are up and right away you can feel a difference because of the larger performance sales
for the sea trial we're sailing at a 60 degree angle with winds of around 13 knots
and using a code zero of about 130 meters
all commands on this boat are external and visibility was pretty
good on both starboard and board cockpits
and we were cruising at 12.5 knots on a 13 knot wind day and minimal waves not bad at all
so
all lines are located at the aft of this vessel
and i felt it was pretty easy to operate them single-handed
as you can notice here the pulpit is extended in this performance cat so you don't have
to retrieve your sales every time you attack like we do on joy our logo 46.
now i'm really looking forward to receive our new code zero we just ordered from uk
sales this week so we can do like a test sale and compare stats
it's calling me
time to go back now and i wanted to focus on how the electric
engine torque would behave when we're getting back to the marine
that's
so let me give you my opinion about test sailing and electric catamaran i loved the fact of minimal
noise coming from the engine theoretically they are green but you still have the big batteries
go under the bed but the fact of not consuming diesel or having smoke whenever you're on the way
is great i did not like the fact there was no solar panels on this vessel and you had to turn
on both of the generators in order to recharge the batteries which in return consume fuels make noise
and give you exactly the same feeling as you have the engines on we have to keep in mind that this
boat still work in progress so if you want to order one just like it for next year let's say
you cannot so there's still an opportunity to make some improvements and make it better on this one
that we have just test sales now if you want you can definitely buy this boat and i inquired about
it the base price for xs 15 as you can see here it's about 650 000 euros but as everybody knows
already there are many factory optionals that you have to put in your boat in order to sail away
so this vessel that we test sail today goes for about 850 000 euros without the electric
engines so if you want the option of the electric engines it's an additional 200 000 euros putting
this vessel a little bit over 1 million euros now for the million euro question is it worth it is it
time to get on the electric wagon let me know your opinion and thoughts about it as for now we truly
believe we're gonna have a all-electric sailboat sometime maybe not right now i liked how the xs
15 sailed in its internal volume for being a 50 feet boat we probably sail at the most 5 of our
time the rest we spend exploring places at anchor or marinas so we give a lot of importance for the
comfort inside of the boat we currently feel that lagoon 46 pretty much check all the boxes
and we're very happy to have joy as our home but a seat has been planted in our minds so maybe in the
future whenever it's time to upgrade we'll look at a bigger bolt maybe 50 feet something that has
a little bit more volume i hope you enjoyed this video and if you're still here by now don't forget
to leave us a like and subscribe to the channel if you're not yet a subscriber next week we will
continue our journey as we depart gibraltar and sail into the mat see you there and it's time
to leave gibraltar uh we had a great time here we spent four days uh we just paid the marina
and we're gonna go just across the bay here in uh spain uh because we're gonna be cruising spain uh
for the next few months so we want to enter the european community once more so they have like a
customs uh office over there so it's gonna stop by but that and much more i will show you next week