Troller Yachts vs Trawler Yachts

A boat design than has come to the forefront of long distance cruising boats in the 30 foot to 40 foot range is Troller Yacht, as in salmon trollers of the Nortwest. These boats were designed to be off shore trolling for salmon with a crew of one or two. They were also designed to troll continuously and were very economical to build and operate. It would seem prudent to design long range trollers for economical cruising rather than the now popular trawlers that are plagued with a lot of fuel burning stern drag.
Troller styled vessel would be slighly longer than their trawler counter parts due to being double ended and more efficient. Draft wouldn't vary much; however, there will be lower power requirements top achieve the same, or greater, speed as higher powered trawlers. Accommodations wouldn't vary significantly.
In this day and age of rising fuel costs, with even higher costs anticipated in the future, it might be a worthy effort to begin focusing on replacing trawlers with trollers. Lately there have been several new boats built on the Monterey trawler hull design. It's well worth looking into, and all comments regarding design and layout are welcome.

 

What's often marketed as a "trawler" these days generally bears little resemblence to a real trawler. The recent trend is towards trawler styling on a fat semidisplacement hull, instead of the efficient displacement hull that real trawlers tend to have. I would be quite interested to see some boats such as you describe coming into the recreational vessel markets- there is an amazing lack of efficient, low-power motor yachts right now.

 

Thank you .....agree

There's a classic example, but some what spartan asm accomodations go, listed on Yachtworld.com. Just type in "Monetery Clipper". The nice thing about the listing is that a commercial fiberglass builder is listed also. It definitely would be an advantage to start a production run of these double enders in the 25 through 40 foot range. I'm flying out to San Francisco on May 17 to look at this particular boat and hopefully bring back construction frawings from which someone may want to produce. I think that there would be a lot of interest in these small long distance trollers.

 

Sorry to be pessimistic

Mode hideous TROLL on
If you do not have money to pay the fuel bill, you do not have enougth money to buy a new boat and will not interest as potential customer any boat builder. The fuel bill is a very very very small percentage of a boat overall cost, even at 100$ the barrel with a 2 * 1000 hp boat.
Mode hideous TROLL off

More seriously:
"3.1.d The issue of fuel cost differentials does not appear to be a significant one"

In this paper :
http://www.rina.org.uk/rfiles/HISWA...POWERED YACHTS AND SMALL COMMERCIAL CRAFT.pdf

From architect Nigel Irens who have designed some most efficient powerboats as Ilan Voyager or cable wireless Adventurer

http://www.nigelirens.demon.co.uk/FRAMEpower.htm

 

If so?

Being that you are in the UK, you probably have not had any experience with the Pacific salmon trollers which are about as an efficient a boat design as any made. If they are so horrendous, why are most of the British motorsailers and many power boats double ended and deep like the Monterey trollers that evolved from the Med designs? Learn a little about hydrodynamics before commenting please.

 

Rich people don't get that way by wasting money.
A more efficient boat gets used more often. There is definitely demand for more efficient boats, but marketing types tend to promote accomodation per unit length (which leads to short, wide hulls) and speed (which leads to big engines to push said short wide hulls).
Friends of mine with 140hp bowriders use them 50+ times a season. Those with bigger, gas-guzzling boats use them less, typically 5-10 times per season. As one put it, his boat (38' express cruiser) may have been $400k, but at four hundred bucks to feed it for 100km it's just not economical to do that often. I often hear from owners of boats much larger than mine that if the boat used half as much gas, they'd do longer cruises and cruise more often.

 

Dock Queens

I whole hearted agree with you. All of the big power boats at Club Med here haven't moved for months while the more economical boats are out frequently. While fuel consumption INITIALLY is a small percentage of over all costs, it is the single factor that appear to dictate frequency of usage and also determines long range capability along with long term cruising costs. Those who can afford big fuel bills, go for it, but the rest of us are content to cruise along in low consumption vessels. I recent ly brought our boat down from Annapolis, Maryland to south Florida with fuel consumption of 4 gallons a 10 hour day. That leaves more money for things I want to do to the boats such as the high end integrated nav package that was just installed. On top of that, we make our own biodiesel fuel at 46 cents a gallon. It's good to have money, but why waste it?

 

I've said it before, you can find it in this forum, the buying public are not interested in efficiency. It's like cars, people claim they really want high efficiency, but the tradeoffs are too big, thus they buy pickups and SUVs.

I've been pushing efficient hulls for many years, very few are seriously interested. Today I'm working on a 55' by 15' steel offshore cruiser that will have a 4 cylinder 107 HP Deere in it. People who know say don't do it, resale value will suffer, and they are right.

Trolling is a fishing method, not a particular style of boat. Trolling involves dragging a series of lures and hooks through the water at low speed to catch fish.

Monterey Boats, (never Montery Trollers though sometimes rigged as such) are native to San Francisco Bay. Influence is thought to be Latin European. They are often referred to as Monterey Clippers as they sometimes have traditional clipper bows. They are double ended and fairly small, 25'-40' long. They were used mostly as day boats, thus are not really intended for heavy loads.

Trollers further north, in Oregon and the PNW, are more influenced by Scandinavian design though they too were often double ended. Modern Salmon and Tuna trollers are all wide-transomed and deep, to handle tons of ice and fish caught over trips of a week or much more.

There have been a number of yachts marketed as Monterey boats over the years. The first Of note was built by CBA (Cruising Boats of America) in the early 1970's, 31' by 10' with displacement of about 12,000 pounds. She had a 60 HP Westerbeke for a max speed of 9 knots reported (on a good day downhill).

Later there was one designed by Ed Monk Sr., maybe 32-34'?, and I believe built on the West Coast. There is a design about 30' by Bill Garden, drawings at Mystic. There are two designs by Al Mason, a 35' with transom and a 37' double ender. None of these have much relation to the fishing boats except in above water styling.

All the best, Tad

 

Troller/trawler

While the Monterey troller is not a specific design, it does speak of a design that is double ended , economically operated just as much as a today's pleasure trawlers are not of the fishing variety. While the rest of the world has grown accustomed to high fuel prices, we in the US are just begiining to realize that prices will only continue to rise. With this comes a sense reducing other costs in our lives. For boater that would rather be boating instead of having their boats sit at the dock, this means ecomomy of operation. I believe that it would not be erroneous to say that the day is near when the market for small long range econoical trollers types would be quite strong. Addressing the market with a nice monterey hull and already accepted trawler accommodation combined with stressing the economy of operation should enable a builder to take a meaningful number of orders at boat shows such as at Annapolis, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. Small Monterey Clippers in the 27 to 32 foot range should gain wide acceptance. A good vessel itself is only half the effort to sell them, the rest is a strong marketing effort and moderate pricing.
I recently sold my 34 foot Mainship "trawler" that required 220 gallons of diesel fuel and bought another 30 foot vessel that only has an 18 gtallon tank and I get a lot more use out of the new one simply by virtue of the fact that it's infinitely more economical to operate. Please don't misunderstand, we do have all of the funds we need to live life well, but why waste money if you don't have to? I'm very happy that I only burn about 4.5 gallons a day and cruise at about 7 knots. I am quite sure that this cost of operation has more than a small following of current and future boat owners.

 

George Buehler claims the "Troller Yacht concept" as the inspiration for the Diesel Duck designs. As far as I can see, it's not an exceptionally narrow or light design -- they simply have a small profile above the hull -- with considerable profile above the water. I find his comparable HP specs very low -- is this real or optimistic? How does the design contribute? What else can any of you add about this design as a "troller"?

 

Qualities

Thanks for the input. A couple good qualities of the Monterey Clipper is that it is a dry boat with it's semi clipper bow. Secondly, with the stern design it's fairly safe when running inlets with the sea behind you. Granted it is a primarily considered a working vessel and not with a particularly deep molded hull. I feel that it would be more efficient as compared to todays trawlers such as the Nordic Tug and others similar.

 

StreetW,

Not even close, pure hype.

Greenseas,

Of course you can have a more efficient hull form, but that means people also have to travel slower, they (generally) are not interested in that. Tooling, marketing costs, and build cost will be roughly the same (very expensive) as everyone else building boats, so how do you convince folks that your boat is better? Perhaps build in China to fit in a container?

Tad

 

May be

Of course who ever builds a boat of the type would have to look at labor and materials costs, and some, Like Don Miller who owns Marine Trader, would most likely go to Taiwan. However, the discussion is aimed more at comparing effiency and economics between current production trawlers and the more efficient troller types with an eye on possible production.. There are a good percentage of people who like to travel long distances at a leisurely pace as economically as practical. Nordic, American and other tug/trawler sales numbers bear that out beyond any question of a doubt. To get some good data on troller design you can go to the Mystic Seaport archives and get a copy of the Montery Clipper originally designed by Harold C. Hanson, NA. Mystic archives number 18.105. I don't think that the efficiency of trawlers comes anywhere close those that are realized in troller design. As previously stated, they will be somewhat longer than production trawlers which means a higher S/L ratio with lower power for the same speed for starters.

 

I'm afraid I agree with you. Maybe what we could call 'connoisseurs' sailors, will look for fuel efficient boats, but those are the less. Among the growing number of people who go motor-boating nowadays, most of them use the boat only for short day trips, and that's why they go mostly for planning or semi-planning boats with high 'hotel' volumes. At least in my part of the world.
Also, although fuel bill is a concern, marina fees are a bigger one. An sleek, efficient long hull (or cat, as alternative), usually pays higher marina fees than shorter but less fuel efficient monohulls. As you have to pay marina fees 12 months a year, if you go out sailing only -let's say- 30 days a year because of many reasons (available time, family, weather, skills, etc.), fuel bill may not be your major concern.

 

fcfc --

I think the phrase "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" only makes sense to people who can't afford it.

People who can afford understand -- if they didn't ask, they wouldn't be able to afford it.

People who've earned their money still turn off lights when a room is not in use, adjust the thermostat for efficiency in their million dollar homes, and check the price of gasoline when they fill their 200k automobiles.