Mothership Marine builds solar electric narrowboats in Oundle, Northamptonshire. The River Nene runs to the town’s south. Oundle is a beautiful and ancient market town famed for its school and surprisingly for Fairline Yachts. Surprisingly because Fairline build seagoing boats that are sold around the world and Oundle is 143 miles by road to the coast. Fairline started building boats at Oundle Marina but have now have moved to larger premises. Now its Mothership Marine’s turn to build innovative boats for the modern inland waterways.

Shape Changer

Narrowboats change shape when put on the water. While it is only a few millimetres it is enough to open joints in internal woodwork. This and the fact that wood and steel have different rates of expansion, apparent when summer sun hits the side of a boat, is the reason why Mothership Marine like to finish narrowboats off on the water.

Finishing boats off on the water enables us to better test systems to make for a trouble free handover with all snags ironed out. 

We have the launch down to an art now and can have a new boat in the water in less that than 15 minutes. After a quick test to make sure there is no water ingress from the stern tube or bow thruster tunnel, we move the boat around to the finishing wharf where she’ll stay until hand over.

MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking)

It’s nice to know that any power needed on the boat during the final phase of the build is produced by the solar panels. It also allows the team to test and fine tune the MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) settings. 

Solar electric boating is all about making sure that owners capture and store as much electric energy generated by the sun ensuring that these free resources are used efficiently.

Mothership Marine are leaders in the electrification of inland waterways. They build beautifully fitted out, highly sophisticated solar electric boats. 

Solar Power

It is the aim of the Mothership Marine design team to have the majority of power consumed on the boats system to originate from the large solar array. In this way they a arguably the greenest and most environmentally friendly narrowboats on the water today.C