Battery-powered boats gain in popularity

Tag : roto molded

Frank Jones watches his Carolina Electric Boats demonstration videolike a proud father. “Look at it just bulldoze thoselogs,” he says without taking his eyes off the screen.“And check this out — if you stand on the side, itdoesn’t turn over.”
Jones says making these boats is his second love. Behind fishing.
He could talk all day about his company’s battery-poweredboats, the first models of which just hit the water this month. Andwith high gas prices making fishing days on a deck more costly thanever, people are listening to what he has to say.
“On a 210 reserve amp, it will run 8 to 10 hours,”Jones said as he demonstrated the Twin Troller in his Bensonshowroom’s 14-inch deep pool.
Besides the beauty of bypassing the pump, the Twin Troller’sdesign makes fishermen happy. The boat, approximately 10 feet longand four feet wide at a cost of $1,895, is a pontoon. Pontoon boatshave a flat deck on top of tubes that run lengthwise. Recessedinside of the Twin Troller’s tubes are a pair of electricmotors, situated behind guards that keep props tangle-free.
The recessed area holds air and creates a vacuum seal that givesthe boat super stability, allowing anglers to stand on the side ofthe hull if they wish.
“I stand up in it and fish frequently. I’ve never seenanother boat that size that you can stand in,”Youngsville’s Tom Craig, one of the first to purchase theboat, said. He saw Carolina Electric’s booth at a show inRaleigh in January, and couldn’t wait until the product wasready for purchase.
“It has exceeded my expectations,” Craig said.“For anybody who fishes ponds or small lakes, this isideal.”
Jones has also talked to fishermen who carry or pull the boat withtheir bass boats so that they can reach thick spots and shallows.
But the hottest feature is hands-free operation. The Twin Trolleris the evolution of Benson resident Warren Lee’s patentedfoot-pedal, twin-motor operation, leaving the angler free to castconstantly.
“The foot-control system goes back 20 years,”Lee’s son Doug, Carolina Electric’s OperationalManager, said. “It came as an idea from some of thetrackhoes, like the front-end loading Bobcat. The zero-degree turnlawnmowers didn’t even exist at that time.”
Lee’s original idea was to suspend a pair of trolling motorson both sides of the customer’s own boat. Merging thehands-free pedals with a unique boat design, however, gives themakers more control over quality.
“Originally, we were using someone else’s boat, so ourmotors were mounted on the outside. Being able to have our own boatreally changed it around and made a lot of things possible with therecessed hull and the whole boat design itself, being thatit’s roto-molded and made of tougher material,” DougLee said.
The boat has two seats on rails that may be slid up and down theboat. “It doesn’t matter that the seats don’tswivel, the boat does,” Jones said. The seats are alsoremovable.
The digitally controlled foot pedals, too, may be placed anywherein the boat that the angler chooses. If you’re fishing with achild and want to keep them in front of you, just move the pedalsin front of the back seat.
Jones, an eastern North Carolina native whose father was stationedat Fort Bragg, is also proud of the roto-molded hull, whichconsists of one-piece, no-seam polyethylene. The foam and the shellcannot be separated and stress points where the hull becomes thinare strong. The plastic boat is also UV-resistant and won’tget brittle and crack over time, although there may be some fading.
But while boat sales have been sinking — a 10-percent drop insales occurred in 2007 — people shouldn’t have to bestranded on the shore. “If I take out my bass boat, I’mgoing to spend $75 in fuel. You can buy a marine battery for thatprice and it will last you three years,” Doug Lee said of thebattery-powered Twin Troller, which also comes with cup-holders, ameasurement rule on the hull and a pre-drilled mounting hole for adepth finder.
Jones has large expectations for the little boat. With a backgroundin corporate manufacturing, he knows where each part of the boatbelongs and what it does. He has a trip to the InternationalConvention of Allied Sportfishing Trades, better known as ICAST, inLas Vegas, on his schedule for July 16-18 where he will meetdealers and buyers.
“We have the production partners in place to make itmajor,” Jones said. He has been encouraged by the short timeit took to get the boat from concept to market; about 10 months.
His next goal is to be the largest boat maker in the number ofpowered units sold in the country. With that number currentlystanding around 20,000, Jones is looking to double up. “Wethink that with four or five different models, 40,000 boats a yearis doable.”
His strategy is global, but he wants headquarters to remain inBenson. “We have talented people here, so why should we goanywhere else?”