cruising costs, maintenance and price of the boat (sailboats versus motorboats)

Will, there is some mistake, the Nimbus 42 Nova, shafts2xVP D6310 Hp (that’s the less expensive version), costs 3.580.200 SEK

This price does not include delivery from Sweden neither VAT (21%)

Price in Euros, including taxes, but not delivery from Sweden is 476 698 euros, and that is way out of budget.

I agree with you about the quality of the boat, but I have already said I don’t find it aesthetically pleasant enough to want to own one, and of course we are not talking about the 42, but about the 38. That one costs 328 372 euros, including taxes, but not the delivery from Sweden.

I have posted about that boat (Nimbus 38) on post 276.

For extensive cruising and living aboard the galley is really too small as I have said on post 317 :

Of course the aesthetical problem is a personal one, the rather small galley (38) or the (very) out of budget price of the 42 isn’t.

 

Yes - sorry Vega - I did realise you weren't that keen on their looks. The price I saw was in pounds - about 326000, I think. I didn't realise the conversion rate was so almost 1.5. As you say the 42 is outside the budget....

 

Cruising boat economics

Vega. One of the essentials in figuring out what cruising costs will be is replacement parts. I just got a jolt yesterday when the water pump on the little Yanmar 2QM15 froze. The replacement water pump was US$339.56. All new hoses and hose clamps set me back another $80. Thought they were madr of bronze, not gold. At any rate, adequate spare engine and rigging spares for long distance cruising can add up to a tidy sum of cold currency. For those planning long distance cruises, start buying your spares far in advance of the departure date to prevent sticker shock.

 

Catmando, you are wrong. I like the Lovestar 40, even if I agree with Will that that boat is very close to the Range boat.

I like it, but not for cruising.

Regarding cruising, even Irens says that for having the same space of a not so narrow boat, this kind of boat needs to be longer.

Looking at Nigel designs, I would say that to have the same interior space (as the Menorquin) it would have to be 14m. The boat exists and has a two cabin layout (like the Menorquin 40).

Of course such a boat will cost a lot more than the considered budget.

The displacement of the 14m boat is 7T and the beam 3.76m.
The Liberty 40 has a displacement of 9T and a beam 3.55 m. I have said about the Liberty 40 : “The only real drawback (besides being out of budget) is that this is strictly a fair weather boat”.

I believe that the 14m boat will not be more seaworthy than the Liberty 40. The Lovestar 40 and the 12m Range, with a displacement of 5T and a beam of 3.3m are a lot less seaworthy boats, boats for sheltered waters only.

I am prepared to accept a much less seaworthy boat, if I chose a motorboat instead of a sailboat, but not to accept a boat only fit for sheltered waters, or very settled weather.

FcFc, the Andreyale 40 costs 665 500 euros, including vat. I have asked and that is the price that they have sent to me.

I think you are right about the Menorquin consumption, but it is already too late. I will post about it tomorrow.

 

Vega - this is an interesting discussion for sure, and forgive me if you've gone over this before. My memory isn't what it ought to be - and the thought of trawling thru 350 posts to see if you've already addressed this is too much to bear!

I am confused by your boat buying thought process. Sure - I understand you have 350K to spend and want as much boat for your buck as you can get. As I said - it's the process I don't understand.

As I've said before, I would not consider a sailboat - my love of power cruising is too profound. You are open to both, as you've stated many times. Yet the choice of vessel type - not necessarily just sail or power - must come down to the type of cruising you want to do.
Surely you have cruising goals - places you'd like to go. They may be near, or far: they may be sheltered, coastal, or cross-ocean.
If you only want to zip up the coast for a weekend or a week, then a fast powerboat makes sense. If you want to travel further afield, then surely the choice is narrowed to a displacement boat (be it sail or power).
I understand that you don't want to buy a slow powerboat. If you wish to travel long distances, across open water, then surely the decision is already made: you buy a sailboat.

 

Common practice from small yards. The prototype and first series al often build in strip planking. Then, if it prove satisfactory and demand catch up, switched to molded composite. The andreyale 40 started as strip planking, switched to composite. The 50 is still strip planked (probably not enough sales). The prototype rangeboat is strip planked but production planned in composite.

 

It is an old post, but did you got any information about similar boats ?

What puzzle me is the weight of 10000 lbs / 4.5 t for a 43 ft / 13.3 m boat.

If the weigth is real, 20 kts with twin 125 hp (spec error the yanmar are 86 Kw = 125 hp, not 86 hp) is truly possible.

I also do not know what are the trade off of such light weigth. It is completely out of my experience domain.

 

Yes, I agree, but I have said : " and that seems too good to be true "

I was not making it up. In the Croatian importer website it says:

“With standard engines of 2x230HP, cruising speed is 16 and maximum is 21,5 knots. Fuel consumption is very cost-effective, barely 25 litres per hour.”

If the boat wastes 25 L/H at 16K, it will waste 1.56L for each mile.

If I recall correctly the nice chat that I had with a guy from the Menorquin shipyard in Dusseldorf, he has said to me that the 40 can have a very economical cruising speed, at 13K (not 16) and I believe he was talking about 25/30 L/H. He has also told me that they were thinking of making a special version of the boat for Northern Europe, with smaller engines and a lower consumption at that speed (and he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it, I mean they are going to do that for commercial reasons, not because they believe it is the right motorization for the boat).

Of course, then the max speed of the boat would only be about 16k and at that speed the boat would waste more than with the actual motorization.

But I have been learning something about motorboats and engines. I have talked with fisherman (that have big engines in their boats) and all of them say that power is safety in bad weather. That and the fact that only at a very low speed you have a significant lower consumption (and a worst at superior speeds) makes me think that after all they know what they are doing (bigger engines have much more torque and can push the boat at very low rotations).

Considering the consumption data that has been given to me at Düsseldorf (and that seems more real) the boat will waste 1.9L/mile.

That hull is misleading, it looks old but it is a modern one and one that incorporates the swimming platform into it, giving the boat a longer waterline.

 

I think Paulo and others will like to know this info, appeared at last issue of PBO magazine, Sarah Norbury's (editor) column:

""I did a straw poll of boat dealers at the Southampton Boat Show, asking wether many people are still switching from sail to power (it tends to happen to sailors as they get older!), and the reply surprised me. Yes, the dealers are selling motorboats to life-long sailors, but the tide is flowing the other way too. Some motorboaters are realising that they can buy a 45ft sailing yacht for the price of their 35ft powerboat, and with the prospect of more expensive diesel looming, they are switching to sail."

Cheers.

 

25/30 L for 13 kts for a menorquin 40 do agree with my small spreadsheet. 2*25l/h do agree also for 16 kts. So, i fear the figure at 16 kts was given for a single engine, not both.


A funny politically incorrect thing is to switch units to some more often heard in automotive world.

27 l @ 13kts, 50 l @ 16 kts and full power @ 21.5 kts translate to:

112L/100km at 24 km/h, 169L/100km at 30 km/h and full power to 261L/100km at 40 km/h.


Under is my own thougth about engines. May not be true.

Now, the fuel burn by generated power (BSFC, brake hp specific fuel comsumption), given in gram per Kw per hour is rather constant. The unit used is gram, because the quantity of energy contained in a fuel depends of its mass, not its volume. The volume varies with temp, not the mass.

Direct injected engine have a 15-20 % better efficiency than indirect injected engines.

Turbo charged engines have a 5-7% better efficiency than normal aspired ones. (atmospheric).

Turbo charged intercooled engines have 2-5% better efficiency than turbocharged engines.

Mechanically controlled engines generally sense 2 parameters (speed and engine temp), and have a single design point of best efficiency.

Electronically controlled engines may sense a bunch of parameters and have a full curve map of best efficiency.

At design point of a mechanically controlled engine, mechanically or electronically controlled engine have the same efficiency. Further you go off this point, better is the gain of the electronically controled engine.

So, the same power generated by a big or small electronically controlled engine of same technology burn about the same fuel.

The fact that a big engine burn less than a small is simply a technology difference.
under 50 hp, most engine are atmospheric indirect injected (the lowest cost, fuel gain do not cover technology costs)
between 50 and 100, some are turbocharged, some direct injected, a few both.
above 100 hp nearly all are direct injected turbocharged.

 

Thanks Guillermo.

These statements came in the line of what we are finding here.
Even if regarding only high quality sailboats (and motorboats) the difference in price is less. I would say that in this case, for the price of most of the quality 34/36Ft you could buy a quality sailboat, or motorsailor with 40/43ft.

That’s why it was so difficult to find (except for my wife ) a 40ft quality cruising motorboat inside the 350 000 euros budget.

 

Hum...by coincidence, last night I had a look at the consumption of several engines with different horsepower (Yanmar, Beta, Volvo-Penta) at the same horsepower (40hp) and I have got the impression that bigger engines waste more for the same 40hp (not much, 1.5/2L more).

But this is not a simple issue, because even wasting a bit more, the bigger engine can be more efficient, because with a lot more torque it can use a bigger and more efficient propeller. While doing the boat research I had seen several cases where, from the same boat, the less powerful motorization was only better at a very specific and low speed. At the speed that most users would cruise with that boat, the more powerful motorization was more efficient. Less RPM and less consumption.

 

Thanks Will . You have a point here. 350 posts are a lot of posts, so I will do a kind of résumé when I have time.

But before, let me tell you that this thread is about cruising and costs of cruising and when I was thinking about cruising and costs, the idea of considering weekend-cruising never passed my mind. Nor the use of a boat for an occasional week cruise, once in a year.

For me, that is an occasional use of almost any kind of boat for cruising.

When I talk of cruising boats I am talking of boats that are especially fit for that use, and that means, boats capable of offering comfort, space, appropriate galley and head(s) as well as a decent autonomy, in water and fuel. I mean boats that offer good conditions for living aboard for a considerable period of time. I think that this is one of the requirements of any cruising boat, sail or motor.

And cruising by definition is voyaging, so it doesn’t make much sense to cruise always in the same bay or sheltered space and even if you only want to go along the coast, you need a boat that is capable of going out of sheltered places.

That’s why I am I excluding very light and narrow motorboats. They don’t have the carrying capacity to be cruising boats (water, fuel, provisions, equipment), nor the interior space or the seaworthiness needed to travel outside sheltered waters (sometimes and in some shores, the distance between ports is considerable and Portugal is one of those places).

If we have one of those boats with the same displacement of the Menorquin, and that means a 50ft motorboat, we would have the required seaworthiness, but then we would be talking of a very expensive boat, completely out of this budget. Nevertheless, if I were a very rich guy and wanted to motor cruise, it would be the one I would chose. Unfortunately, I am not

Of course, If I want to cross oceans, with this budget, I would chose a Sailboat or a Motorsailor. But I never said that. Europe has the Med, the Black Sea, the Baltic and these are places where you can make a lot of cruising, even if they do not qualify as sheltered places, at least sheltered enough to use one of those 40ft light and narrow boats as a cruising boat.

Will, perhaps some confusion about what I call a slow motorboat, and a justified one.

For most motorboaters, slow is less than 20K. I am using here another concept, the one of a poor cruiser, as unfortunately most of them are.

For slow I mean a motorboat that makes the same average speed cruising of a sailing boat, or just a little bit more. There was a lot of talking in this forum about those, but I find them uninteresting (and the market shows that it is also the opinion of the vast majority of motorboaters).

The biggest advantage of a motorboat over a sailingboat, is the speed. Cruising sailboats can also motor, so what is the advantage of having a motorboat that can not go faster if I can buy a sailing boat for less money? Then, if speed doesn’t matter, buy a sailboat, sell the sails and mast and have an inexpensive motorboat.

A fast cruising motorboat (for me) is one that can, at economical cruising speed, double the speed of a sailboat of the same size and is also capable of a maximum speed of at least 20k.

 

Will, finally I had the time (and patience) to have a look at previous posts.

I think this résumé will clarify “my buying thought process” .

Regards

 

And very well you have expplained it too! Sorry to have made you repeat it.. I knew it was in here somewhere!