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In spring 2023, just before the new season, Robust-MT Marine Technology BV visited the UK with a road trip along colleagues and the south coast of England.
An entire boat show dedicated to electric boating—we just had to go. We weren't disappointed. What a huge focus on electric boating across the board.
We enjoyed the stands with their diverse selection. We were familiar with most of the products, but some we hadn't seen in person yet.
We also met new people, including David Ellis from Temo distributor Marine Components International , and we also had the opportunity to catch up with good friends such as Steve Bruce from ePropulsion .
Besides the stands, there was also a floating boat show, and we were incredibly impressed with David Kendall 's Optima E10 . What a beauty, we'd love to have one of those someday.
While we see a great many sloops, tenders, and daysailers in the Netherlands, this is practically negligible in England; at least where we've been. Marinas equipped with all the amenities we're used to are also considerably less common along the English south coast. What's particularly striking are the enormous rows of moorings and floating quays where (sailing) boats lie year-round waiting for their owners. This directly impacts the possibilities for electric boating and customer needs. A boat moored to a mooring doesn't have shore power, and therefore the chance of electric boating is practically lost unless a solar or wind-powered structure is built. However, few brands offer this ready-made, leaving a world of opportunity for system integrators like us. The infrastructure in Dutch ports lends itself better to the full electrification of recreational boating, even using the existing shore power infrastructure.
In England, all those owners have to travel back and forth to their boats with a dinghy, and that's where we see a significant increase in sales of light and small electric motors such as the ePropulsion Spirit or the Temo450 , which are mainly used to get to and from the boat.
We didn't actually see any electric boats in the ports of Portsmouth, Plymouth, Brigham, or Falmouth. Bristol was also on our itinerary, but we had to cancel that due to time constraints.
We didn't get to see that this time, but we'll definitely be back next year to explore, learn, and make ourselves known. The video below of a hybrid narrowboat gives hope; what a beautiful country and what a wonderfully diverse watersports market. We'll definitely be back.
