The light weight of the four-stroke Aqua Bug (shown here) and its two-stroke cousin are both light enough to be side mounted on a canoe without overwhelming its stability.
photographs by the author
My 2.5-hp four-stroke Yamaha outboard, the smallest in the Yamaha line, weighs 40 lbs, so I’d never imagined putting it on my lapstrake canoe. The canoe doesn’t have a transom, so I’d need to mount the motor on the side, and hanging 40 lbs out there was out of the question. When Bike Bug, maker of compact gas motors that can be added to bicycles, emailed me about their Aqua Bug two-stroke and four-stroke outboards, I had a chance to see what it would be like to have a power canoe.
Bike Bug claims the Aqua Bugs are the “world’s smallest” and indeed both of them are very easy to carry with one hand. The four-stroke weighs 17 ½ lbs with a tank one-third full and its crankcase filled with oil; the two-stroke weighs just 11 ½ lbs with a half tank of gas.
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These gas engines pollute and are noisy. Why not use an electric outboard? The new generation of
electric outboards have long range battery power, and have solar charging capability, and are very
affordable. And why would one want a lawn mower engine screaming in your ear while you are canoeing?
Very interesting. Liked the engine snapshot. I think it would be a great idea to do an issue on small motors suitable for small craft, including DIY, projects, small diesels, long-tail motors etc. Great mag. Cheers
Ha ha, the proverbial “egg beater” motor!
Thank you for reporting on this. It’s unfortunate that small and lightweight seems to necessarily mean a lot of noise. It would be interesting to know just how loud these motors are. Sound measuring apps are easily available for smartphones. They’re not calibrated, but would still add a level of objectivity to the report.
I do have a decibel app on my phone so I took readings of both motors. The 4-stroke registered 68 dB at half throttle and 70 dB at full throttle. The 2-stroke registered 72 and 77. The distance from motor to phone was about 30″. The decibel scales I looked at on the web put 70 to 80 dB in the range of a busy street to a vacuum cleaner. That didn’t seem to offer an accurate comparison—the motors seemed louder than that. I haven’t calibrated the app on my phone, so I decided not to present the readings with the review. I should dust off my chainsaw and see if it registers the 110 dB the scales indicate it should be. I’d guess that the 2-stroke Aquabug, the louder of the two, would be a bit under the chainsaw’s reading.
I put a Minnkota EO1 on my Welsford Navigator as an auxilliary motor last summer. It’s awesome. Silent, lightweight and portable. Supposedly it gets 9 hours of motoring at 1/2 throttle on a single charge (2 x 12 volts), but I haven’t put it to the full test. Moves us along at about 4kts at full throttle.
People keep repeating this claim of 9 hours on a single charge without naming what is being charged. The 9-hours claim does not sound right to me. If the motor pulls 30 amps at half throttle, it will use up a Group-27 90 AH deep-cycle battery in 3 hours. At 45 amps the battery will be dry in 2 hours. A Group-27 battery weighs around 55 lbs. You would need 3 batteries plus the motor to go 9 hours at 1/2 throttle. Would someone really do that with a canoe or kayak just to go 3 mph? I can paddle my sea kayak all day long at 3 mph. People might try some really expensive LiPO batteries. Still something is missing from this picture. What am I missing?
One of the joys of being out in a small boat, rowing or sailing, is in the sound.
Loud motors such as these obscure that experience. No thanks.
The Torqeedo 5 hp has been working for me for 3 years now pushing a 3-ton sailboat around the marina, 18′ aluminum canoe up and down lake, along with super quiet power for a Winboat sailboat/RIB. Super electric power, no noise, gas, fumes, CO2.