GEAR TESTED
NEXT GENERATION SMALL (2HP) OUTBOARD EQUIVALENTS
Pros
Noise, smell and mess free
Remarkably intuitive
Light and portable
Ease in shoal waters/beaching
Enjoyable novelty factor
Cons
Expensive and needs multiple extras too ·
Don’t want to leave unattended
Power worries when in use – running out and recharging
Durability unproven
Price: €1,590
Rating ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
temofrance.com or marinecomponents.co.uk
If you haven’t yet tried the Temo 450, imagine a sculling oar with a propeller I on the end, writes Toby Hodges. It’s an innovative small electric engine which provides ‘electric paddling’, says its French makers.
Weighing only 4.9kg, it’s very portable and can easily be removed to charge or stow. Within the aluminium shaft is a brushless 450W motor and a battery which gives you around 45 minutes running time. It’s equivalent to a 2hp outboard and provides 200W of propulsive power, which is enough to propel loaded boats up to 2.5m with two or three people on board.
We were certainly intrigued enough to want to try it out properly this season.
IS IT FOR US?
We have a 2.3m inflatable tender for our boat and have used that for the last decade under oar power alone. That was sufficient for short journeys, but as the children continue to grow, the inflatable seems to shrink and get heavier and the appeal of a mechanical boost increases. This overgrown stick blender or ‘egg whisk’ as it became affectionately known, has been the talking point piece of equipment for us this year – it sparks a wonderfully mixed reaction with most people. It was only once I saw a couple in a similar sized small inflatable, powered by an old 2hp 2-stroke noisily announcing their arrival to the entire harbour, that the appeal of the Temo sank in properly. ‘They must be struggling to have a conversation... how archaic,’ I thought!
I’d watched many of the intro videos and read the FAQs etc, but it was clear within the first couple of minutes of use just how intuitive this contraption is. In fact I soon learned I could entrust it to a child with little guidance, which is a big difference to a petrol outboard.
During our punchy shakedown voyage, a near two-mile trip up river, my first error was to assume that the full battery status, shown on the handle, meant that it was fully charged, as this dropped to 50% within the first five minutes of motoring. I learned my lesson and for the return journey ensured it had a full charge (this takes 3.5 hours on 220V or you can use a 12V charger) and learned to only maintain around half to three-qu
