[Stephen McCann]

Dear All,

Has anyone put an outboard bracket on an Atalanta before? It’s my interim solution before I change propulsion next year when i have money, to get up the Hamble against the flow – I reckon even 2.5hp would get me moving – I was Goosewinged with full engine on Sunday and only doing just under 1 kt. I plan to buy one of the retractable ones so that it can sit out of the water completely and will balance the moment with stuff in the forecastle.

Thanks in advance

Topic

[Mike Dixon]

Stephen,

You raise some interesting issues.

Let me be upfront – I have no experience of an outboard on the aft end of an Atalanta.

Balance – a small outboard on the aft end is not going to be much of a trim issue unless you also have an 80 kg person perched on the aft end operating the outboard.

The propeller need to be well immersed – the last thing you want is the propeller to come out of the water when the boat porpoises in strong wash or swell – so long shaft essential.

But I suppose my main concern is practicability.  One person is on the aft deck operating the engine; another person is on the foredeck ready to anchor or pick up a mooring; a further person is (probably) in the cockpit ready to deal with sails.  Co-ordinating that lot will be interesting – not impossible, but interesting!!

Good luck!

Mike

[Stephen McCann]

Mike,

 

thanks – i plan to use it for extra oomph when battling the tide as my Farymann is still lacking puff until i work what is wrong/change it around (will write up my plans here soon) So it will be fixed and when i get to a mooring/harbour it will be switched off to use inboard engine only for anything that requires deft manoeuvres! I’ll ise one of the retractable brackets to dip it in/extract as required. I’ll need to drill thru and make a plate on the inside

[Chris Green]

Hello Stephen

Firstly, your inboard should provide more than enough oomph to push your Atalanta along – even against an ebb tide. You might consider checking your motor setup. If this is for A89, as I recall she was originally based on a lake and had a hydraulic drive – and is still the case, you may consider switching to a direct drive to add about 25% more power.

On the outboard options, many Atalantas have had outboard motor installations – including my current one (A169) when I originally acquired her in 2011. The outboard had a complete wired setup with ignition and morse controls routed to cockpit. I removed the installation as part of a total refit/rebuild –  there are some archive photos of her with this setup in one of the back issues of the Annual Bulletin (also other Atalanta outboard setups as well.  I have now a Lynch 48V 7.5 kW electric inboard motor. For any extended motoring I also carry an old (refurbed) Seagull SP 5hp outboard motor with a Seagull removable outboard bracket – from Sheridan Marine – with a long range tank. Some early Atalantas used the same long-shaft big prop Seagull engine instead of an inboard; one interesting article is in an early bulletin issue has the motor mounted on an outboard bracket outside the cockpit.

This link shows my transom outboard bracket holder  installation i.e. for the seagull bracket bolted through to an internal 20mm hardwood backing plate

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jISSTqvX3o8P04Vs3yTGdfE-5-7jaCce/view?usp=drivesdk

I hope all this is of some help.

Chris

[Author]

Replies