Sources and references#

Sunwake SW-15 · SW-REF Rev 0 · August 2026

This document collects the external sources used in the design: standards, vendors and products, precedent boats and their designers, relevant media, and the methods behind the calculations. Links were live in August 2026. An [inferred] mark means the organisation was named in the design work, but the link is its main website rather than a page cited in the research.

Prices, underwriting requirements and product lines change. Inclusion here is not an endorsement, and any vendor figure should be confirmed with a current quotation before it is used for purchasing.

1. Standards and regulations#

Waterway constraints are physical and legal limits rather than standards, but they set the air-draft and draft budgets: the Erie Canal low route at 4.57 m, the downtown Chicago River at 5.27 m, and the Bahamas banks below about 0.95 m. Illinois Waterway gauges can change by about 0.6 m in a day, so confirm the current level with the lock rather than relying only on the chart.

2. Precedent boats and designers#

The direct precedent#

Electric Philosophy — a 12.7 m stitch-and-glue solar-electric catamaran designed and built by Sam Devlin in 2021, 11.8 t, 9.5 kWp, twin 20 kW drives, with more than 3,000 nautical miles of service, including Alaska. It provides a close precedent for the construction method, boat type and size, and its service record helps calibrate the powering work.

• Devlin Designing Boat Builders — the design process
• Devlin — the design process in depth
• Sam Devlin profile — Power & Motoryacht

Amateur-build precedent in plywood#

• Dudley Dix (Dix Design) — Dix 430 (13.1 m), Dix 470, DH550 (16.8 m): radius-chine and sheet-plywood catamarans amateur-built worldwide, with a mature CNC kit pipeline. Dix 430 · plywood catamaran kits
• Richard Woods (Woods Designs) — the Skoota 28/32/36 plywood power catamarans, the closest existing owner-built power cat precedent, with a published shell takeoff. Power catamarans · Skoota introduction
• James Wharram Designs — Tiki and Pahi catamarans, plywood and epoxy, routinely amateur-built at and above this size. wharram.com

Candidate designers for the engagement#

See naval architect engagement for fit notes.

• Kurt Hughes Multihull Designs, Seattle — multihulldesigns.com
• Bedard Yacht Design — solar-electric powercat design and plans — bedardyachtdesign.com
• Stephens Waring Design, Belfast, Maine — stephenswaring.com · their electric lake tender, in Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors
• Hylan & Brown, Brooklin, Maine — hylanandbrown.com/design · profile in Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors

Styling and systems reference#

• Silent Yachts — serial-hybrid architecture and the integral stern-platform styling device adopted into the lines plan.

3. Vendors and products#

Drives and propulsion#

• Danfoss Editron — the EM-PMI240-T180 PM machine and the EC-C1200-450 active front end; marine-class-approved power electronics, and the components behind the engineering-fallback generator build. Motor datasheet · AFE datasheet
• Cascadia Motion / Rinehart — candidate traction motor and inverter family. cascadiamotion.com [inferred]
• ePropulsion — I-series high-voltage inboards, and the I-40 / G102 packaged 96 V ecosystem carried as an alternative architecture. epropulsion.com [inferred]
• Torqeedo — Deep Blue and Deep Blue Hybrid, an established production example of a 348–352 V marine bus. Hybrid drives
• Sharrow / VEEM — toroidal propellers, evaluated as a deferred running change. The attraction is noise, not efficiency. sharrowmarine.com [inferred]
• Gates Poly Chain — the toothed-belt class specified for the 2.5:1 reduction. gates.com [inferred]
• Line cutters: Shaft Shark, Spurs, Shaft Razor class.

Generators#

• Fischer Panda — AGT 20-VS PMS, the primary recommendation, and the AGT 45-VS PMS that sits inside Torqeedo's Deep Blue Hybrid as a range extender. Hybrid-VS category · AGT 20-VS PMS · AGT 45-VS PMS · 2023 Hybrid Series brochure · PVMV-N custom-voltage programme
• EPTechnologies — 12–20 kW Kubota-based DC generator, order-configurable from 48 to 800 V DC; the challenger, on weight. Generators · Product overview and the Sunreef 50 reference · METSTRADE listing

Ruled out, and why, in generator selection:

• WhisperPower — DC line tops out at 12 kW / 48 V
• Praxis Automation GreenGenerator — smallest is 140 kW
• Volvo Penta variable-speed sets — nothing below about 200 kW
• Yanmar YF12e — 48 V, 10.5 kW
• Genevos HPM-40 fuel cell — fits the bus window, quietest machine on the page, rejected on fuel logistics
• EODev REXH2 — hydrogen range extender, same reason
• Epic Power DC-DC modules — the stack-of-converters route to a 352 V bus, rejected

Batteries, BMS and power electronics#

• EVE — the prismatic LFP cell class used as the value baseline. evebattery.com [inferred]
• SVOLT and BYD — blade-format LFP cells, the packaging argument for putting a battery under a bed. svolt.cn [inferred]
• Orion BMS — US-made battery management in the EV-conversion class. orionbms.com [inferred]
• Lithionics — UL 1973-listed marine lithium products — UL 1973 for marine
• ROYPOW — DNV type approval announcement
• Victron Energy — MPPTs, inverter/chargers and the Cerbo GX class energy manager, including documented DC-generator support — generator auto start/stop
• Bender — insulation monitoring device class, one per hull. bender.de [inferred]

Structural materials and suppliers#

• Noah's Marine — BS 1088 Lloyd's-certified okoume in the sheet formats that matter: 1220 × 2500 · 1530 × 3050
• World Panel — marine plywood
• Meranti BS 1088 (Hydrotek class), Baltic birch and Douglas-fir marine plywood are specified by class rather than by brand — see materials takeoff §1.

CNC machines and cutting services#

• Avid CNC — PRO4896 (4 × 8) · PRO60120 (5 × 10) · PRO4896 review at MellowPine
• Sienci AltMill — sizes and prices
• Market context: 4 × 8 price tiers · used market · Surplus Record CNC routers
• Hewes & Company Marine Division, Blue Hill, Maine — an established kit-cutter for outside designers, an hour from a Downeast shed. Cutting for Vivier designs · Maine Built Boats profile
• Chesapeake Light Craft, Annapolis — custom CNC cutting at a published rate. Services
• 100kGarages — routing-rate norms. Cost estimating
• Professional BoatBuilder — CNC construction on the rise

Ship systems#

Specified by class rather than by brand, and listed here so the classes are findable: Kabola and Wallas for the HVO-fired hydronic backup heater; Spectra for the energy-recovery watermaker; TruDesign for composite through-hulls; Stat-X for aerosol fire suppression in the battery bays; Rocna and Spade for the primary anchor; Fortress FX-23 for the secondary; Garmin for chart plotters and digital switching; Starlink for satellite communications.

4. Insurance and underwriting#

The research behind electrical and insurability.

• Practical Boat Owner — "How I got insurance for my DIY eBoat" — the hard precedent: a 120 kWh DIY catamaran refused by multiple insurers over about two years before it was finally written
• PKYS — insurers and lithium installations
• Yachting Monthly — DIY lithium installation and coverage
• Marine Industry News — insurance refusals on lithium-ion boats
• Panbo — 2025 ABYC battery and electrical standard updates
• Small Craft Advisor — reader poll on wooden and home-built boat insurance
• Waterway Guide — the BoatUS fire-claims breakdown — 26 % of boat fires from off-boat sources, about 47 % from ordinary AC/DC wiring and engine-electrical faults, and 8 % from batteries
• Yacht Sales International — electric boat company failures — background for assessing the risk of relying on a single vendor

5. Design process, fees and commissioning#

• Eric Sponberg — How to Commission a Yacht Design and Have It Built (PDF) — the fee-percentage bands
• Kasten Marine — Yacht Design Costs — the hourly-against-commission argument
• Caribbean Compass — conversion costs, part five — real-world DIY electric-conversion parts cost
• Practical Boat Owner — converting a catamaran to solar power

6. Video and media#

Four long-form build videos from a couple of physicists building a 68 ft custom solar-electric catamaran in Rayong, Thailand informed the systems thinking on this project — particularly on battery packaging, digital switching, and the serial against parallel hybrid question. Transcripts are not carried in this repository; the episodes are:

• "Inside Our Custom 68ft Solar Electric Catamaran — Full Tour" — interior and exterior, the bifacial solar roof and wing, a galley redesigned in Fusion 360, and the hull extension for the drivetrain
• "Our Electric Boat Runs on This Battery. Not Solid-State. Here's Why" — a 700 V, 254 kWh blade-cell LFP pack, cell spacing, and the argument against semi-solid-state, with an Orion BMS 2 in master/slave configuration
• "The System Behind Our New Solar Electric Yacht" — digital switching and propulsion control, and a clear treatment of serial against parallel hybrid architecture
• "The Unexpected Twist on Our Boat Build: Custom Wavebreaker Install" — the wave-breaker and nacelle install, and the battery module build

The design draws two points from this material: the thermal case for placing blade-cell packs low under the berths, and the need to plan digital switching as one system instead of adding relays piecemeal.

7. Methods, papers and computational tools#

The calculation package implements these methods directly instead of calling a library, so the references describe the methods rather than the software.

Software used or specified downstream: Rhino (.3dm) and STEP as the native CAD deliverable formats; layered DXF for cut files; VCarve Pro as the CAM standard in the kit world; NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib in the calculation package itself.

If a link is no longer available, the document that cites it still records the design decision and reasoning. Confirm any source that will be used to place an order or make a contractual decision.