Building a Hobie fishing kayak, with a Minnkota Ulterra

Oh boy, you are gonna fly on the lake....

Not really James, that prop only turns so fast and only cuts so much in distance per revolution. However it will have a lot of torque due to power vs weight ratio....not a lot will slow me down which is important when it comes to weight and wind/waves.

Arnie

In this pic the 24 volt system is fully wired and testing it for voltage. There is a plug in the aft deck where the batteries are plugged into. There is another plug at the front of the cockpit that the motor is plugged into. As you can see I have 27.2 volts on the meter. Two 12 volt batteries hooked in series.

In this pic checking the plug for the motor I have the same voltage at 27.2 so there is no drop in voltage. However I don't want that high of voltage to go to the motor, as I don't think it would be good over the long haul. I will put in a voltage regulator to curb it to exactly 24 volts.

In this pic is my Noko battery charger/maintainer. I will wire it to charge or maintain the batteries especially in the off season.

I made up two leads like this to charge the batteries independently of each other so that I could use the sure connection of Anderson connections.

In this pic they are hooked up to the Noko in parallel and are charging....love those Anderson connectors.

I numbered the connections to make hooking up in series idiot proof.

This is the batteries with everything all cleaned up and the finished look. I will still put two cleats down on the narrow gunwales and a strap over the top to strap the batteries and aluminium rack tight to the kayak in case I do flip over. Also some rubber feet will be added, which came in today, to the bottom of the rack to prevent the aluminium from chafing the kayak.

In front of the seat in the hatch there will be the heart of the 12 volt system....seen here is the 30AH battery that will power it. I am starting to see the finish of this kayak build. I did about half of the 12 volt system and have pretty much finished the 24 volt system except for small tweeks. I will share a few pics of the 12 volt system. It will run my lighting and electronics. The cockpit lights, bilge pump, Navigation lights will run through a switch at raw power straight from a 30AH Lifepo4 battery. The Helix 10, Fishawk, directional puck for the trolling motor and the future Mega 360 will run off the same battery but through a step-down regulator that will limit power to them at exactly 12 volts.

Seen here is the silver step down voltage regulator as the battery was generating almost 13 volts. So I split the system so that the sensitive electronics would only get 12 straight volts as seen on the volt meter. The lighting will be wired through a switch board and run on 12.8 volts.

Pretty much as far as I have gotten to yesterday the white wire to the left goes to the switch panel and the white wire to the right goes to the voltage regulator in side. The black and yellow wire is 12 flat volts that will come up on the left gunwale and form a waterproof bank of 4 plugs to plug in my power sensitive electronics.....the plugs came in today. Tomorrow I will run the 12 volt wiring to all the lights and switches and put the bank of plugs in. Except for a few small tweaks that should finish this project.

The bottom wires of the switch panel.

The finished look of the switch panel when all complete. The switch panel also has two USB ports for charging the phone or VHS radio and a voltmeter to keep a eye on the strength status of the 24 volt system. It also has a 12 volt cigarette lighter type barrel connection.

man you do good work. I have a question as I'm not a yak guy. All this has to add a lot of weight. Wondering what is the capacity of a yak. I know the 80lb thrust will have no issue moving it, just wondering about weight.

2nd question. will you leave your batteries connected to the charger all winter? I'm always trying different things to keep batteries good for as long as I can. The battery shop told me this year that to plug them in once a month. That batteries typically lose 1% a day sitting there. The last batteries I had came from the boat shop where I bought my ultera, they said to fully charge them, then just disconnect the neg cable.