Electric boat conversion - drive bearing

This bit certainly isn't unique to our conversion - it's a version of an "Aquadrive" bearing used to connect the drive shaft from the electric drive motor to the prop shaft.

In the photo, the drive shaft from the motor is coming up from below into the (green) bearing, with the prop shaft going off at the top.

What is crucial to our conversion is, note, how the bearing casing is bolted to a strut connected to the boat's "chassis" - so all thrusts (forward or reverse) from the propellor are transmitted to the boat via this bearing (or other linear sudden thrusts)... leaving the drive motor to only have to provide the rotational torque for the propellor. There are NO propellor-created nasty forces on the motor bearings so expected and experienced wear on those is trivial.

In practice, even at high power, the electric drive creates absolutely NO vibration (although there's a lot of water noise - especially water cavitation noises under the stern which sound quite like an angle grinder at top speeds!) At normal cruising speeds the drive is almost totally noiseless except for a slight electronic whine from the speed-control electronics.

The lack of vibration is quite startling - if one observes the top of a cup of coffee placed on the gas box above the deck, the surface of the coffee is totally still. And this is also true if the generator is running. Quite a result!