About 14 years ago, Billy Litmer took a Greyhound bus from Kentucky, where he was in college, down to Key West to go snorkeling. He wanted to stay, so he went to work for snorkeling tour companies. Five years ago, he started his own business, Honest Eco Tours, specializing in dolphin watching. Then he got the idea of building his own emission-free boat that would have the least possible impact on the fragile Keys environment. The result: Squid, a 35-foot solar/electric catamaran that can hit 15 knots, but usually travels at half that speed, leaving almost no wake or carbon footprint.
To design his boat, Litmer turned to David Walworth, an MIT-trained naval architect, who came up with the idea of a lightweight, electric-powered cat. Then Litmer moved with his wife and two children to Santa Cruz, California, to build it himself. That took about 18 months. He says that Squid is made from foam core composite and lots of carbon fiber to keep weight down. The cat is 35 feet long, with a 14-foot beam and a 22-inch draft. It weighs 8,000 pounds.
And it has a Torqueedo electric motor with power from two BMW i3 lithium-ion batteries and a series of 16 Sunflare solar panels on the cabintop that generate 2,000 watts. A Lombardini 25kW diesel generator gives a boost when needed. Litmer says that Squid is the only electric-powered charter boat in Key West.
I asked Litmer about Squid’s range. “Our range is totally dependent on our speed, and because our trips are different every time, it’s hard to give a single answer,” he said. “Because we operate as an eco-tour boat that must go where the wildlife is for that day, we see a big mix in our range. On some rare days we may not need the generator, and on other days we will run the generator for at least six hours.”
At Squid’s top speed of 15 knots, it has a range of about 15 nm. If it slows down to 6 knots, the range expands to 50 nm. But it is quiet, and the hulls slip gently through the water. Squid doesn’t interfere with the behavior of the dolphins or other wildlife, it doesn’t affect the environment. For more, see the video below or go to:
