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Old 11-18-2007
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Integral ballast/battery

Probably this has been tried before, with disasterous results ... but I was thinking, "It's a shame batteries are so heavy, so cruisers have to get by with undersized power storage. All that lead. Sigh."

Hey, wait a minute -- sailboats are FULL of bloody lead. It's called ballast, right? So why not make a nice deep bilge, line it with polycarbonate, hang lead plates with separators, and pour in a hundred gallons of sulfuric acid? The plates may need to be shaped to fit the bilge/keel, and you'd want baffles & restrainers to stop em flapping around too much, and they'd have to be modular so you could yank out a dead cell at need, and you'd need a good sealing cover with venting....

But youze is smart people. Let's see if you can think of ways to make this idea practical! I mean, if yer gonna schlep three tons of lead all over the place, it may as well be working for you, right?
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