Electric Trolling Motor

K

kennharriet

Member
Has anyone front mounted an electric trolling motor on a CD 22'? I have a Minnkota Auto Pilot with a 48" shaft from another boat. Hanging it between the bow rail mounting flanges, the prop is below the paint line. It seems this could make the boat more versatile, ie: bass or crappie fishing along the lake shore.
 
Ken
Hi. how are you all doing? Am thinking that you woud burn through a battery pretty quick pushing a boat with the weight of a 22' cruiser. But I guess a guy could try.
Chuck
Bootleg Hooch
 
I don't know about the fishing angle but it would make a niffty bow thurster for docking.

Give it a try and let us know how it performs. Good Luck.
 
The only problem I can see is that boats buck and rock and unless the trolling motor is well under water , the prop will come out of the water and you will have a fancy bow decoration that wont work well unless its dead calm . But the wireless remote type trolling motors would be the answer on a C Dory for sure . Hope it works . Keep us posted .
Marc
 
I was hoping someone else would take the bait and give it a try before I mounted it on my boat. :P

Makes sense that the motor would be in and out of the water if there was any chop at all, because of the bow up attitude of the C-Dory. I'll let you know how it works. Thanks
 
Seems like you would need a motor leg about 7' long. I have thought about a good one several times and just put it on the transom, for those really calm days. But those are few and far between.
 
So how about that bow mount option?

I use a remote controlled unit now on a Lund and I sure would miss it. They have 54 and 60 inch shafts availble from Minn Kota at least. Can somebody measure a 22 from bow deck between the vertical supports on one side to the resting water line?

Could it be mounted around the existing cleat and anchor hardware? How wide is a 22 front deck in front of the V-berth hump? I am picturing one mounted sideways and positioned on the deck edge of one side spanning nearly the width of the forward deck. They have a mount (black or white) that only requires the top smaller block in this pic.

http://www.boaterbarn.com/images_produc ... 693big.jpg
 
I have an 60 shaft 83# Thrust trolling motor on my Caracal. The freeboard is about 6" less on the Caracal--they are sitting side by side on the trailer. But the Caracal, being a cat, has a huge for deck and we put the trolling motor when "up" along the top of one AMA. To put this size trolling motor on a C Dory would be awkward at best. You have the forward hatch and bow railing/pulpit to contend with. The Caracal has a platform mounted fishing seat so that one can control the motor easily by hand or foot option.

We use two #27 batteries to power this motor--and that is sufficient. But for that size motor (the minimum size necessary for a C dory 22) you would use more power than for the smaller caracal cat, with its narrow hulls.

I believe that it would not be practical--and that is why I have a Center console, boat which has a dedicated casting fishing platform for the trolling motor.
 
I dont believe the weight of the boat is a problem, our old Lund weighed 1,000lbs more than a 22ft C-Dory.

http://www.bassresource.com/fishing/cho ... motor.html

personally I think the problem is just the awkwardness of casting, but I'm very picky. also I kinda think the cabin creates more of a sail than a flat bass boat, so if you are working the shallows hard, it seems like you could very easily be fighting the breeze much more so in than in a flat bass boat with no wind block at all.

I definitely understand the idea though. bass boats and duck boats were high on my radar, but in the end they didn't make the cut.
 
We use a 55lb salt water bow mount on our current Lund. It is a relatively light boat but still 17ft long with 7.5ft beam and more draft than a 19/22.

We power it with two group 31AGM batteries and have never been able to get them down below 85% charge. We use the boat almost entirely in the Puget Sound and steer the motor with a wireless remote I-Pilot system. We have found the 55lb motor to be perfectly adequate and with a Kipawa prop pushes the boat at about 3mph when needed but that is not how we use it.

I really love the GPS anchor mode where the motor steers and powers itself to hold the boat in one location and for that I think the power requirement is significantly less than trolling along all the time. We use it in moderate winds and currents with no problems.

I can see the motor across the bow of a C-dory as a bit of an eyesore/tripping pole but wonder about the simple feasibility.

What is that distance from bow edge (next to rear railing base) to the water line? And how wide is the 22 at that point across the deck? If it could fit it could work and that would be great.

I don't think this type of autopilot motor would work well of the stern or I would be looking into that as an alternative. I think dragging a boat around by the rear would not quite be the same. But from a front corner....
 
At the aft base of the railing it is about 33" to the water, at the mid point about 34" and bow almost 36" (depends on loading, trim and weight on bow). The dimension across the deck forward of the aft railing is about 44" (you cannot go straight across the boat, because of the cabin house above the bunk. The over all length of the 60" shaft length trolling motor is 75" (it is almost 30" longer than the boat is wide at that point--so would stick out about 12" one side and 18" on the other side--because of the configuration of the mount for the trolling motor--and there is a significant crown to the deck. The mount alone is 28"--and with the configuration of the tilt mechanism to deploy the motor it would not work because of interference with the railing. The only option would be to leave it fixed with a mount which did not bring the motor aboard, but only allowed you to pull it up and down (which has to be done manually.

I don't know what size Lund DuckDogTitus has, however I could not find one in the current line up which weighs more than a C Dory 22. As pointed out the area exposed to the wind is probably more important than weight when using trolling motors.

Lots of difference between pulling an aluminum boat around and a 22 C Dory with a trolling motor--Although a 55 may move a 22, it is not adequate--I find that the 83# thrust is about right for the 18 foot cat (low profile, since there is no T top.
 
There is (or was) a trolling motor type of bow thruster. A standard trolling motor would probably not be a good mix because of the issues getting up and down along side the boat's fore deck (you have to go up forward and manually lower the motor--I am not aware of any mount which would allow electric deployment, because of the railings etc--but there may be.

There is the "side shift" which bolts to the bow above the water and prop is near surface--maybe below water when at slow speeds, and out of the water when on a plane. There is also the bolt on the bottom bow thruster, contained in one package. But both of these could be problems putting the boat on a trailer. There was one which bolted on the side to the deck, but I cannot find it currently on the internet--it didn't look like a good design...so may have survived.

There are several which retract into the bottom of the hull $$$! I have owned one boat with a bow thruster (although a couple of others I would have put one in if I had the money at the time, especially in retrospect particularly the 62 foot ketch we took to Europe and back--with a lot of maneuvering in tight places. But we got by. The boat I owned was a single engine trawler with a lot of windage, and it was very helpful. It would push the boat off a dock with 30 knot beam wind.

As for the C Dory--they are so light and small --even the 25--that you can maneuver them with an outboard--or a paddle if necessary!...There are trolling motors which go on trim tabs, and two of those would give the effect of twin screws--plus are wider spaced than the outboards, so would be effective in docking....These would also go better with the fishing and do about as well as a bow trolling motor (which is a bit of a misnomer, since many fisherman use the motor to maneuver the boat for casting of bait rather than actually trolling with the electric motor.) These are the Minn Kota Trim and Troll system. Not cheap, and only for fresh water! Lenco stopped selling the trim tab motors this year.
 
I got a few measurements on our existing Minn Kota Riptide ST 55lb 54" IPilot

-The total length of the motor when laid flat on the deck is 66''
-The amount that would hang off the deck on the prop end when mounted is 10"
-The shaft floats 6.5 inches off the deck when laying down
-The motor head rises 15 inches from the deck when in use
-The base of the motor is roughly 12x7" but the mounting block itself which would always be there even when the motor stays at home is 4x6"

The deploying action is sliding and tilting in nature and should not interfere with a railing running over it as long and those railings are 15+inches off the deck.

I could not find a perfect pic of the forward deck of a 19/22 but it looks like one of these units could be mounted roughly parallel to one side of the bow on whichever side does not feature a hausepipe. The base would be mounted to one side of the anchor roller and the shaft of the motor when folded would hover over the centered anchor cleat which is not ideal but workable.

At least with a white motor and mounting block it would be a bit camoflaged when mounted and the small block would not be noticable when the motor is not carried. Now how to run the power.....

Mounting block that stays mounted all the time:

http://www.c-brats.com/albums/album1321 ... .sized.jpg

Why do I care when I don't own a C-dory? I like to plan ahead.

Greg
 
So here it is! You can put (at least) this trolling motor on the bow of a 22/19. Why, well let me explain.

We installed this motor on our Lund Impact two years ago thinking it would be handy for fresh and salt water fishing and boy did we underestimate how nice it would be.

It is basically an easy to use silent motor with a smart GPS driven autopilot but the most useful feature is the anchor mode. With one button press on the neck pendant floating/waterproof remote, the boat holds your current position steering and throttling automatically to "anchor" the boat against significant wind and tide as well.

We use this to hold us over or next to fish cover in salt and fresh water and quite precisely keep the boat off the rocks or between the kelp or hold against a current while we can fish and not have our hands full with the boat. It works well for holding the boat steady anytime you would like your hands free for dealing with 6 year olds or whatever boating brings your way. Did I mention that during all this time there is no engine noise! Just the sounds of nature while you enjoy fishing from your boat.

I can also reach down and click the anchor off, turn and throttle to change position then push anchor again and get right back to fishing all from anywhere I was already standing or sitting. It can also follow a set course or even re-trace a saved route along a shoreline for hours while you just fish, and at any time while on the move that anchor mode is just one click away from holding you steady. It will also drive the boat at 1.5-2 knots for quite a distance so I really don't start the outboard to move unless we are leaving the area.

My brother in law ended up with a similar rig by chance on a boat beginning last spring and thought it "might be nice sometimes". After a season I asked him how he liked it and he said he will never fish without one again, It is his favorite feature of the boat, and he mainly fishes salt water in the sound.

This thing changes the game entirely for us and we were not too interested in loosing it.

Power? We have the 55lb thrust model with Kipawa prop and we run it with two group 31 AGMs at 12v that also serve as our house batteries on the 19. The Lund was only a foot shorter and had more beam, draft, and with full canvas, plenty of windage and we never wanted more thrust. As a battery test once, I ran it for 3.5 hours at 3/4-full speed powering around and outside Gig Harbor against tide and wind on a crappy day to find the batteries down to just 91-92%. It doesn't work that hard in normal use at all and usually sits at 5-20% power while anchoring even with wind/waves thrown in. With DC and AC chargers my range anxiety faded to nil and we have used it for hours each day for 5 straight days with no AC charging and had no problems with power.

The mounting was tight on the 19 but we found a spot that would just work and the quick release mount leaves little on deck when we leave it at home which will be about half the time. Raising and lowering the unit is easy and clearance is actually very good for those moves.

Instead of making more holes, I will just run the power plug down through the hawspipe and plug it in to the cable I ran from under the berth. Real anchoring and using this motor should never really happen and the same time so this should work fine. I have a surface mount receptical ready if I get annoyed.

The anchor gear still has a direct line (rubbing the corning of the mount lightly) to the bow cleat so that still works fine. I could redirect the rode over to another piece of hardware if it bothers us over time.

The position of your boat's hawspipe or presence of a windlass might make this type of motor mount challenging or worse.

Can't wait to get back on the water with it and you will all have to weigh-in on how it looks in person at the Friday Harbor CBGT. We know it is a little gawdy but at least it's white and quickly removable! Let the questions fly if you have any.....



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