Wow, I always sorta wondered what it would look like if I just painted over all my grinder work without fairing, nice to know!
I saw on your blog that the first time you took the helm was on True North in St. Martin. I didn't get the helm job (mainsheet) but that was my first big boat experience, the rest had been on Lake Lanier. Of course now I'm hooked too.
This is the part where I have to be a wet blanket.
There are some charlatans out there selling electric drives for boats, they seem to crop up periodically. Let's run the numbers to get an idea of what it would take to provide electric power for a Triton.
We can use the 6 hp outboard as a baseline (to say nothing of the 25HP A4.) A horsepower is 746 watts, so that 6hp represents 4476 watts of power per hour of motor operation. At 12V that is 373 amps per hour. If you want a two hour total run time (you said to get off the dock, do you need more to get back?) that represents 8952 watts, or 746 amp hours for two hours running. Assuming not discharging the battery bank more than 50% we're talking about a battery bank of about 1500 amp hours. 8D AGM batteries are at about 250 amp hours each these days. That means we'd need six fully charged 8D batteries for a two hour run time. At 166 pounds each thats about a thousand pounds of batteries and about $3700 from Apex Battery.
You can't get a 6hp 12V motor so the motor is going to be a high voltage DC one at the very least, so now you can't use the big bank for house loads, there is an expensive charger for use at the dock that will be required, a fancy motor controller system, and you've got dangerous voltages running around the boat.
As for charging under sail, dragging props to generate juice has been tried a thousand times and no one has ever been pleased with the results. Here's a quick chart from a company in the UK selling water generator:
http://www.duogen.co.uk/wtr_gph.htm
Their numbers (which look very optimistic to me) indicate that at 5 knots the generator is making about 5-6 amps.
This chart shows drag:
http://www.duogen.co.uk/drg_gph.htm
At five knows you'd have about 25 pounds of drag force (anyone know if this would be the same as a 25 pound thrust trolling motor turned around?)
Even if we accept these numbers from the DuoGen at 6 amps of power at 5 knots of speed it would take about 133 hours of sailing to replenish the power lost from those two hours of motoring out. I know I've never kept up 5 knots for that long, in fact if I did the math even on a good day when I was "doing 5 knots" I was probably averaging three or four. At three knots you're only making two amps. Worst of all the drag would be terrible! Even when cruising or day sailing the thought of all that extra drag is just a downer!
I've tried to plan a workable electric drive six ways to Sunday; solar, tiny motors, exotic batteries, you name it; it just doesn't work out. The current limiting factor is battery technology, liquid fuel is still the only practical solution to storing enough energy on board to motor for any length of time. This is a topic I've really gotten into so if anyone has any good ideas then let them rip! That was just a quick run down of the numbers too so if I got my math wrong let me know so I can fix it.
The best electric solution right now is probably to get yourself a pretty big house bank, the biggest trolling motor you can find, a high quality multi-stage battery charger for time at the dock, and hope for good weather! If you're just day sailing that will probably do in most situations and it will be quiet, relatively inexpensive, the weight will be down low in the hull and not on the stern bracket.
Dave