Ivy League Effort
A PRINCETON UNIVERSITY CLUB BROKE THE ELECTRIC CLASS SPEED RECORD BY OUTFITTING A HYDROPLANE WITH AN ELECTRIC OUTBOARD AND BATTERIES
Whether i t was a schooner crossing the Atlantic or a jet shattering the sound barrier, setting a speed record has long been a way to promote a new product or technology. So, it’s no surprise that as electric marine propulsion advances there has been growing interest in setting a top speed mark for a boat fueled by batteries. What is surprising is that when that record fell in late 2023, it was Princeton Electric Speedboating (PES), a club of Princeton University students, rather than a major manufacturer, that raised the bar.
In October the tiger-striped PES hydroplane Big Bird howled over Lake Townsend outside Greensboro, North Carolina, to set a new Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM) Circuit Outright Electric Class record speed of 114.2 mph, besting the previous record by more than 25 mph. PES was formed in 2020 when Princeton junior Nathan Yates read an invitation for participants in the Promoting Electric Propulsion competition. Four other students, working remotely during the Covid pandemic, joined Yates in the effort to build a powertrain for a small hydroplane— too small, as it turned out, as the boat swamped moments after it was launched at the 2021 competition in Boston. The team, which started to grow in size as more students joined the effort, acquired a 12-foot D Stock hydroplane dubbed Tiger which reached a top speed of 42 mph with electric power.
Enter Princeton freshman Andrew Robbins, a Michigan native who grew up waterskiing behind his family’s 17foot Boston Whaler and piloting their 42-foot Cigarette. Robbins noted that Tiger could hit 85 mph with an internal combustion outboard. If PES could source a more-powerful electric outboard, and perhaps a bigger boat, Robbins proposed the 88-mph speed record could be eclipsed. “This was right after our first race, where we didn’t even finish,” said Yates. “But I was sold. I could see the math and the vision. It was absolutely doable.”
Robbins eventually connected with powerboat racer J.W. Myers, the owner of Black Sheep Racing in South Carolina, who put Robbins in touch with Jim Dernoncourt, the owner of Big Bird, a 14-foot Pro Outboard canopied hydroplane designed by Ed Karelson and built in 1993 for the late Howard Anderson, a recordsetting racer and APBA Honor Squadron member. “J.W. Myers knew this boat and thought it was both fast and safe, and happened to be in Michigan,” said Robbins. “Dernoncourt had just completed a total refurbishment of the boat, so it was solid and had no rigging. It was perfect for our project.”
Seeking more power and technical expertise, the PES team—now numbering 44 undergraduate and graduate students representing engineering, economics and physics disciplines—contacted Ben Sorkin, a 2017 Princeton grad and one of three co-founders of Flux Marine, an electric outboard start-up based in Narragansett, Rhode Island. “I had been working on a hydroplane with an electric motor in 2015 when I was at Princeton,” said Sorkin. “The team reached out to me and I acted as a mentor.“
To power the record-setting boat, PES utilized batteries and powertrain components supplied by Flux, including a 400-volt 24-kWh battery pack. The team used the Flux motor, tuned up by modifying the controller to increase rpm and boost peak power from 150 to 180 hp. For a run of this short duration— less than one minute—it was possible to allow the motor to operate at peak, rather than lower continuous, power. The team had to devise a midsection to support the motor and mate to the transom of Big Bird, and a closed loop cooling system for the motor and inverter. The motor drives a Bass Machines lower unit with 6 percent overdrive gearing and a four-blade 8 x 19 Dewald propeller.