Will $5/gallon gas change the next boat you buy?

I think it is always interesting that people put forth sailing as a cheap alternative to power. While this may generally be the case take a look at the FPB by Dashew. His numbers indicate that at least with the right power boat it can be less expensive to burn diesel than deal with sails.

 

sails are a cheaper alternative when fuel is so expensive, i don't mean high cost hitech sails. but as frosty points out there a lot of situations where sail is not an option. here where i live we have reliable wind and sailing is popular, yachts go everywhere i go with my power boat i just do it quicker but it costs me at the bowser, i am paying $1.72 aud a liter for unleaded.

 

Whity dont you think it would be worth swoping those gas motors for some diesels. There is at least one Aussi company sells used marine engine acquired hand picked from Japan.

Your old motors would be worth a bit to the race car industry and a couple of desiel with a same or close footprint would only be a weekend job ,--maybe a shaft modification at the machine shop.

Might get cheaper insurance without all that petrol on board. Its a floating bomb.

 

Today gas went down 10 cents a gallon and is expected to go down 50 cents. Good present for the end of summer if it reaches the gas dock. But it will be up again before next summer.

I don't want to give up ride or speed. It's painful filling up, but it's worth it when I'm on the water still no hesitation. It's painful enough filling up that it's definitely on my mind when thinking of my next boat - a little hesitation.

 

10$ a gallon...

Here in Norway a gallon of unleaded is hoovering just below 10$ a gallon. 9.6$/gallon today.

I'm happy with my relatively new 4 stroke outboard.

I guess you do not see as many powerboats in the 40knot+ range here as you do in the us.

Diesel is 5% chaper than gas, and is very common in boats with inboard engines here.

Perry

 

you are spot on frosty. i have been looking into diesels for a while but the initial cost is the problem on my budget. the ideal setup for me is a good 2nd hand 200 hp volvo duoprop. you can buy a kit which uses nissan diesels and the origonal boxs and shaft gear but that is 20k. if it cost around $15000 to change to diesel that is 8500 liters of petrol which could keep me going for years anyway. i am coming to the conclusion that willaison is right, cheaper to sell the boat and get one more suitable. good thing is , my boat is worth a lot more than what i paid for it so the profit can go towards a motorsailer.

 

at 10$ a gallon have you ever considered going bio-diesel or even bio-petrol.

diesel around here hit $4 a gallon about the same time I converted my truck to run on WMO

Even if your stuck with a gas engine and can't afford to swap out for diesels its not that hard to crack petrol out of waste oils if your handy and have a big enough back yard to house the system. Costs about 1k to build one.

alternative fuels is what comes to mind whenever I read threads like this one. Conventional fuel is getting scarcer and its bound to end up pricing most of us out of the market.

 

I would imagine Norway as does England still taxes you on road fuel wether you made it yourself or not. How they would know to stop you and dip your tanks for analysis would depend I suppose of the friendlyness of your neighbourhood

After a grands worth of gear and if he does little mileage as Europeans tend to do in comparison with USA there would be little incentive.

Proof indeed that all the government cares about is revenue and not saving the planets natural resources.

I would go electric if I did not have to drive from Thailand to Malaysia every 6 weeks which means the vehicle is driven 6 days per year and stands in the sun the rest. If it were 10 dollars a gallon I would fly it.

I think its 1.72 per liter in Uk now so that is 12.1 dollars an Imperial gallon.

Electric motorcycles are available in Carefour supermarket in most attractive colours.

 

well, do the math, 1000 in stuff = 100 gallons at 10 a gallon. If his tank is 12 gallons then thats about 8 tanks. Seems pretty worth it to me. Question is how much does he drive. Or for that mater how often do you burn through a ton and a half of fuel.

I'm guessing your tanks total 400 gallons, not sure what your spending pr/gallon but if its what fuel costs around here then with a backyard pyrolysis system you've paid for the system in about a half a tank.



thats the one I build to condition motor oil and burn that instead of diesel, works with veggie oil as well but not quite as good. The pyrolysis system is a bit more complex but can produce fuels, either diesel or petrol out of banana peals if you really wanted it to.

OK so I didn't mean to highjack the thread

I'll leave this up for an hour or so and then delete it

my bad

cheers
B

 

How much fuel do you use going round collecting used oil. Would a part time job not be more financialy viable and I think you missed the bit about Tax still having to be paidn In Uk anyway and probably Norway.

 

I drive about three blocks to the auto parts store where they collect the stuff and pay to have it taken away. Takes about 20 maybe 30 minutes to fill up on 200 gallons and and send it through the filtering process the first time. I pretty much just let the filter run whenever I'm driving after that.

I didn't miss the part about taxes, I've got farm plates which exempt me from a whole slew of regulations. If someone else wants to volunteer an unenforced tax I suppose thats there decision

 

Well it does appear then that you are in a fortunate position and the recycling of fuel will be beneficial. I doubt if anyone else could emulate that situation.

A steady Supply is the key to any such industry, and tax relief as well!!!

 

the reason I'm going forward on the Pyrolysis system rather than just depend on the WMO system is so I can diversify the potential feed stocks. They day will ( eventually ) come when I'm doing what your are, unfortunately most likely with less capitol tho, so I need to find a way of reducing costs. A slip in Thailand is bound to be cheap but I"m aiming for the PNW where prices are only rising. Gotta dream up some ways to save money and still achieve the retirement I've always dreamed of.

Your question on fuel is spot on and the solutions are many, its just that a lot of folks don't really know there options. Various Waste oils can be run directly in certain diesels but the process of producing fuel from a much wider range of feed stocks is really pretty simple. Mass talks about CNO and he's right it would work, not in my area but maybe in his assuming a few things. Plastic, specifically polypropylene is a great feed stock for a fracturing system like what Pyrolysis does, and the oceans are full of the stuff. My next thing after I restore the truck is to build the fueling system for the boat. I could go with WMO and I will, but I also want to be able to produce diesel on my own. The existing system ( pictured ) worked so well that I decided to restore the truck to new condition. But your right in that my supply of WMO might not always be there. Good reason to branch out a little. Funny thing is that the WMO system was estimated at $600 and ended up around $1200, so its reasonable to expect that the system I'm estimating at 1K ends up being about 2K by the time I'm done building it. Still works out well but even so, its more expensive than it seems on the drawing board.

Three cheers Frosty
always good going round with you
B

 

Don't delete anything on my account. A bio-diesel powerboat would be great to keep on enjoying what I enjoy now. Getting 125 gallons of bio-diesel to the boat would be a big problem with no gas dock. I doubt the marina would look the other way more than once. It would mean towing the boat every time I wanted to fill up. Doable though. Other problem has already been discussed. As gas prices go up, the supply of free waste oil could dry up.

 

Bio-diesel will be harder to come by after Michele O bans french fries.