A mid-year update…
I’ve been working since January on a pair of projects that are starting to become more real. Both of them are about providing infrastructure to help with the energy transition, in boats, from diesel to electric power. Today I want to announce the first one, Rising Tide Boat Works.
If you want to build a new electric boat, or repower a diesel boat to electric, you’re gonna need, at the very least:
a place on dry land big enough to contain the boat while you work on it, ideally covered and heated
industrial zoning that lets you do the work
a way to get the boat in and out of the water! Once a boat is too big to fit on a trailer, you generally use a travel lift, which is a kind of giant remote control crane truck that can pick up the boat and drive it out on a dock to deep water, then drop it in
… which of course means that your spot has to be waterfront, in deep and protected water
Places like this turn out to be really hard to come by.
The nice thing is that wherever you do find those basic ingredients, a lively ecosystem grows up around them. I absolutely love Boat Haven in Port Townsend, which is 20 acres of municipal land hosting a delightful assembly of machine shops, fiberglass experts, naval architects, welders, marine equipment thrift stores and distributors of brand new engines, builders of new aluminum boats and restorers of old wooden ones. They’re all surrounded by boats in every possible condition, and all sharing the core facilities provided by the Port, as well as sharing stories and advice over lunch at the on-site cafes or while wandering in and out of each others’ shops.
Rising Tide Boat Works wants to be like that, but exclusively for electric boats. The dream is that if we can provide the basic shared infrastructure, we can attract an ecosystem not just of welders and machine shops (though certainly them), but also people developing new electric drive systems, or new types of solar panels, or experts in assembling giant battery banks or in converting diesel fishing boats or…
But first, we’d need a large industrial lot with a big covered shop and a deep and protected waterfront, and places like that are really hard to come by. Which is why it’s really exciting that we’ve managed to buy one: 5 acres of what was once a WWII seaplane base, in the gorgeous surf town of Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is going to take quite a while to restore the old flying boat hangar, clean up the soil around the military’s old fuel tanks, and build a new pier for a fully-electric 100 ton travel lift, but it. is. going. to. be. awesome.
We’re going to need help, obviously. If you can see yourself being a part of this ecosystem, in any way, get in touch: I’m avi@rtbw.ca or you can spell it out in full as avi@risingtideboatworks.com .
(No, there’s no website yet at those domains. Actually, that’s something we need help with too).