Story Photos
 Mike Bontoft gets a fish-eye view as he steers the Watt Knot lying down in the cockpit of the 95-pound boat. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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Castle Rock boat builder eyes electric-engine speed record
Thursday, October 9, 2008 11:54 PM PDT
By Brenda Blevins McCorkle
Printable version
E-mail this articleZooming along at 100 mph is a walk in the park for some speedy racers. On land, that is. When water is involved, the mph century mark gets pretty serious.
For Michael Bontoft of Castle Rock, that number looks even more death-defying. All that’s between him and whatever dangers lie beneath the surface of the water is 95 pounds of protection, consisting of a couple of layers of fiberglass, carbon fiber and a fragile tan-colored filling suitably called “honeycomb.”
Making the feat even more unusual is the boat’s power source — an electric motor powered by 42 lithium polymer batteries encircling the craft in two rows.
Bontoft and his partner, dentist Lorhring Miller of Springfield, Ore., will use the lightweight racing craft to try to set a Guinness World Record for fastest race time for an electric boat. Bontoft will pilot the boat starting at 8 a.m. Saturday at Devil’s Lake in Lincoln City, Ore.
Bontoft, who runs a machine shop business out of his home, built the boat there, with his wife, Brigitte, at his side. The couple moved to Castle Rock about 12 years ago from California. Michael is a native of England, and Brigitte was raised in New York.
The crazy pace of the Golden State brought them to Washington, where they found the perfect home nestled close to the Cowlitz River.
Racing boats is not new to Bontoft, who piloted offshore power boats in his youngers days in England and around Europe, then moved on to building and setting records with model boats. He stumbled across the idea for an electric boat by accident.
“I was just looking around on the Internet, Googling and stuff, and saw this record come up for fastest electric boat in the world,” Bontoft said. “I didn’t think it was that high. I thought I could build something better than that, that can go quicker than that.”
Employing materials used to make aircraft, Bontoft constructed the boat to be as light as possible.
“It’s fiberglass, carbon fiber and honeycomb,” he said. “The honeycomb layer is a core that fits between the fiberglass and gives it its thickness.”
Putting the materials together makes the panels “very lightweight and very strong,” he added.
Forty-two batteries power the electric motor, which attaches to the rear of the craft like a gasoline boat motor.
“This will start your car,” Bontoft said, hoisting one of the two-pound batteries. When the batteries are combined into six packs, roughly 22 volts are given off, with a total voltage of 133 for all the packs when linked together.
The batteries give off enough amps to “make basically 65 to 70 horsepower with the motor we have on it,” he said.
The motor is a modified Prestolite, which was made to serve in a forklift truck.
Because of the boat’s cramped size, Bontoft lays down in the hull to manuever it, with just a column-less steering wheel and throttle.
“You don’t need a steering column, you don’t need pedals, you don’t need a seat, so all of those things when you’re building a lightweight boat are just all along for the ride,” he said. “They don’t help the boat go faster, they’re all for driver comfort.”
It took Bontoft roughly 18 months to build the boat, which cost about $30,000. The batteries worth $14,000 were donated by a Korean company, Enerland Division of A123 Systems.
Using the “best of everything that’s available” to construct the craft will hopefully give him an edge in setting the record, Bontoft said.
“We took the best of everything that’s out there and then built a really nice streamlined boat,” he added.
So far, he and Brigitte have tested the boat at Silver Lake four times.
On its first run, the boat did about 78 mph. A few adjustments helped Bontoft to creep the boat’s speed higher and higher.
During the last test, it topped at 101 mph.
Even though the current record for an electric boat is only 50.8 mph, Bontoft said he’s not saying the Devil’s Lake contest is a done deal. Many other boats, including some electric ones, will be there trying to set records. In addition, a team from England is attempting to be the first to race an electric boat to 100 mph.
“This one has come out very good, very light, with a lot of horsepower,” he said. “But it’s still difficult. The weather has to be calm, no wind. It might be possible, but it’s very, very tough.”
The minimalist design provides little protection in case of an accident. It’s a risk Bontoft is happy to take.
“You can never rule out what can happen and the dangers they entail, but you can try to make it as safe as possible,” he said.
Brigitte said she sweats only a little when he hits top speeds.
“I’m nervous, but when he does it, it’s exciting,” she said, giggling.
As he runs the course, Bontoft keeps an eye on a GPS-fed speedometer that accurately records his mph.
During his last test, when the boat reached 101 briefly, Bontoft said he was proud of what he’d built and hopes the world will soon see what a little ingenuity and time can do.
“It was a really smooth ride. Obviously it was very calm, there were no waves or anything. It felt great,” he said. “The boat feels very stable, no bad habits. I’m pretty happy with it.”
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