The first thing people want to know about an electric sailboat is how far it will really go. Not the datasheet figure — the honest one, the one that survives a multi-week cruise on the actual coast. So here is ours, measured, not modelled.
In the summer and fall of 2024, SV Endurance — a 1972 Camper & Nicholson 35 out of Oak Bay — sailed more than a thousand nautical miles up the coast to Desolation Sound and back, unsupported. No fuel dock. No shore charge along the way that the boat couldn’t have done without. Just the sun, the sails, and a well-sized battery bank.
Across the whole voyage there were zero critical electrical failures. That sentence is doing a lot of quiet work. A multi-week passage is where marine systems reveal what they actually are; this one simply kept running.
Net gain, not range anxiety
The headline finding reframes the whole question. Over the 1,000 NM trial the array harvested more energy than the motor consumed — the 48 V bank never fell below 50%. The right measure of a day wasn’t speed over the ground; it was net energy at anchor. You stop asking “how far can I go before I run out” and start asking “did I end the day with more than I started.” On this trip, again and again, the answer was yes.
Something changed in how the boat was handled, too. Autopilot use climbed from around 60% under diesel to over 90% under silent electric — the person at the helm quietly became the person supervising the system. Ed describes the feeling better than any spec sheet could: with the motor silent and the boat holding its course, “the world is moving around you, not that you are moving through the world.” It is not sailing and it is not motoring. It’s a third thing, and once you’ve felt it you understand what the numbers are really for.
A thousand miles, no fuel dock, more energy in the bank than the motor took out. That’s the proof. What it means for your hull is a shorter conversation than you’d think.