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

Vega;

I suggest you take a look at the following, at least for comparison purpose;

http://www.pytrawlers.com/

I know it isn't as fast as you have stated you would prefer in a motorboat, but it would make a good comparison to a quality, CLASS "A", sailboat.

 

That boat Max speed is 8.9K. That would make for a cruising speed of around 7.5/8 K.

That is the speed I want in a sailboat while motoring, not a motorboat speed. For me (and that of course is personal) the main advantage of a motorboat is speed, and that means that if I can not have that advantage, I will always chose a sailboat, because, like Yacht371, I find more enjoyable sailing than motoring. So for me, less than 16, preferable 20k of cruising speed, would not justify to change from a sailboat to a motorboat, even if they cost the same.

But for cruisers that don’t like sailing and like to go slowly, I will agree with you. This is a very good-looking boat with a very nice interior for a very good price (around Usd $320 000).

I don’t like the Island Packet motorsailor version, that is ugly to my eyes, but on this one Bob Johnson get it right.

Anyway, I doubt the mass-market wants a slow motorboat. I will bet that in a year or so this boat will be offered also with a 250hp engine and that version will largely outsell the original one with the 110hp engine.

 

I understand your personal preference and your bias , but I thought this thread was comparing cruising sailboats and cruising powerboats, not just the ones you like.

What I like about this boat is it has comparable speed to a sailboat while motoring, so it is a better comparison than a higher speed powerboat. More apples to apples so to speak. I think the key is to compare it to a comparable quality and capability sailboat.

You keep making the statement that economy sailboats are lower cost than economy powerboats. I would say that I would not go further offshore than I could swim in a boat of that quality. Maybe the statement should be that power boaters have higher standards.

 

I guess it all depends where your priorities are set. My main cruising area was to be the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. The weather there for long seasons required a pilot house to get out of the rain.The long inlets are better served under power. I had a 34 ft. Comercial trawler that cruised at about 6.5Kts. I wanted something a little quicker. I wanted a cockpit to fish out of and some redundancy in the power department. I also wanted sails just for the joy of sailing and extra safety. And I wanted furling main and Genoa. A genset, a watermaker, hydraulic steering, autopilot, Chartplotter, radar,etc . Also wanted the sails to be handled from inside the pilot house because I am getting up there in the years dept. I looked for a long time, kicked a lot of hulls and finally found the boat I wanted. Don't know why someone isn't still producing them. Mine is a 1981 model, twin perkins, and is 44 ft. long, 13ft. 9 in. beam has everything I mentioned and more. What is it? this is a quiz.

 

My parents dealt with this delema and ended up with a trawler instead of a sailboat. A marine Trader 34ft, mind you an old marine trader (1984), when they put some love into em. They chose the boat because of its range, economy, sailboat like speeds, but much much more room and visibility than a sailboat(wind fairy).

After cruising with them some 3000miles in the course of 9 months, there were some disadvantages, such as emergency situations, like storms. My father continues to say he wishes the boat could get up and move when it needed to, instead we got stuck in many storms and 2 hurricanes. The boat faired well though in almost every situation, except a 5ft following sea. When we almost capsized, actually digging the rail in the water and cavitating the prop(on a trawler!).

Overall I'd the ideal cruising boat based on that, would be a trawler with enough room, the economy and range of this trawler and the ability to go about 12-15kts.

 

Now that I have finally finished this thread, I'd like to share my background, explain my preference and describe my plans.

I'm a Mechanical Engineer with 27 years experience, 15 is rocket propulsion and the last 12 is systems engineering working on electro-optical targeting systems and weapon system integration. In my work I have the opertunity and pleasure to install electro-optical systems on some very high speed boats and integrate them with weapon systems. I provided a picture of our company demonstrator boat below, a 45 knot Magnum 46'. These installations always include at sea acceptance tests so I get to ride plenty of high speed boats. I have found that fast boats are a lot of fun for the first hour or two and then they can be a real pain in the *** and a lot of other places. I have also found that when the weather forces you to slow down to displacement speeds they ride a lot worse than displacement boats. When we go out on a test shoot the Admirals and VIP's will depart for the range several hours before us. We will get out to the range is 1 to 2 hours, go through our test plan and shoot off a magazine of ammunition and return to port in another hour or two. When the VIP's return we have a celebratory dinner and the VIP's have a great time watching those who rode the high speed boat fall asleep.I have seen the same thing in marinas. The planing boats arrive first and hit the sack early while the displacement boaters arrive late and go out to dinner.

I have decided that my boat will be comfortable and slow. I plan to enjoy the scenery, reduce fuel consumption and arrive refreshed.

Since I live in Southern California, I need a boat that can handle the Pacific Ocean, which has an abundance of fetch and is rarely calm. I am also subject to high slip fees (almost as bad as the EC) and the best cruising grounds are about 1,000 miles away. I would like to spend my 5 weeks of vacation per year cruising as opposed to getting to the Pacific North West and/or the Sea of Cortez (AKA Gulf of California). Therefore, my boat will be a transportable Passagemaker which we call Portager. In the US I can get oversized load permits and provided I stay under a 12 foot beam I can transport on multi-lane highways without a pilot car. Therefore, Portager is planned to be between 58 and 64 feet long, 12 foot beam and less than 13 foot 6 inches on the trailer. Length to beam ratio will be 4.5 to 5 so she will be very efficient. She will weigh ~32,000 lbs light and ~44,000 fully loaded and meet IMO offshore stability requirements including severe weather. With a 140 HP main engine she will provide 11 knots max speed fully loaded and over 12 knots light with a range of >700 NMi on 600 gallons with 15% reserve. At 8.5 knots cruising speed she has a range of 2,400 NMi which equates to 4.7 NMi/gal or 0.85 l/NM which is quite good considering her displacement. The cost of Portager is anticipated to be under $350,000 US (professionally built in Aluminum). The Truck to pull her will run another $140,000 and the trailer will be about $35,000. Since I will keep her out of the water, the Truck and trailer cost will be offset by the lack of slip fees and reduced bottom maintenance.

Portager will have the range to cross oceans and she may but my wife will be on a higher plane. We dream in crusing Europe, Maldives, China, ... When in EC we will spend most of our time in the canals since slip fees in the Med would be exurbanite for a boat this long.

As I plan to formally start the design work on Portager in the next few days (maybe weeks) I will open a separate threat on her design and invite you all to comment.

 

Lancer

That is way too easy. It is a Lancer Pilothouse 44' sometines referred to as a Lancer Raised Saloon Motorsailor.

 

Your pretty sharp Portager. This is a great boat Why are they no longer being built by someone.Mine has the Marconi boomless rig.

 

The market isn't in love with motorsailors. They offer the best of both types and the worst of both. The boating world is split between power and sail and it is becoming increasing polarized. Most power boaters want speed and convenience and sail boaters want great performance under sail and quiet operation. Motorsailors aren't fast or and they do not perform as well under sail.

What king of props do you have? Fixed, folding or controllable pitch? Most motor sailors has fixed because the power is too much for foldable and controllable. If you have fixed pitch then you either have a lot of drag under sail or you run the engines and motor/sail.

Good luck with your new boat, she is a beauty.

 

The Lancer 44 I bought is in immaculate shape and has fixed props. The power is two perkins 4-236 (85hp). This shure beats the old double ender, fishing boat I had, for speed even under sail if I have a good breeze.

 

Do you idle the engines under sail or just shift in to neutral and let them "freewheel"? In moderate winds, you can get better sail performance if you idle the engines. You can also sail and motor and drive the sailboats crazy.

 

Yes I use the motors and the sails at the same time and get some decent speed out of this Lancer, I haven't had it long enough to do a lot of expermenting which will happen this summer. Right now I am a long ways away from my boat and I can't wait to get back in early July.

 

What's the cruising speed with sails and engine working together?

 

Speed with both Sail and engines is dependent on wind conditions but I have seen over 12 Knts. with the engines at 2000rpm and a 15knot breeze. Another owner of the same boat says he has seen a steady 14 to 15 knots on a good tack with everything working together properly. I don't know how full his tanks were and how strong the breeze was. Tankage in this vessel carries a total weight of close to 4000 lbs when everything is full. Overall it is faster than I expected out of a medium displacement Pilot house cruiser. When your used to 6 knots maybe 6.5 Knts with a tail wind in a fishing boat this is like flying. Everthing is relative to the point of reference. But compared to another boat I had in my younger years that flew at about 40 Knts. (white knucle riding) this would be like a slug. This is the right speed for this time in my life.

 

In the FWIW department, the U.S. Department of Energy has a spreadsheet on estimated world production of oil.

It shows that 2006 world oil production decreased compared to 2005. This would be a first.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t11c.xls

As this information becomes more widely available, I suspect it might have some bearing on the operational costs of motor boats.