Sail drive vs. shaft drive

[EllesBelles]

Originally Posted by LagunaRed

We have a sail drive and I would say the advantage is really the smaller foot print you can achieve. This disadvantage is that you have a big hole in your boat that you really need to watch the seals on. I would avoid if I could but seems like most cats have sail drives these days and we wanted a new boat. As they say, there is no perfect boat!

Antares catamarans have shaft drives. They're great cats. We're biased because we have one, have sailed 30,000 wonderful miles on her, and the shaft drives are a great comfort to have when you're crossing oceans

[olaf hart]

Current boat has a sail drive, older ones were shaft drive.
If you want a newer boat, it's more likely to have a sail drive.
So far OK, I service it annually, change oil and zincs and special antifouling.
Only issue is proprietary zincs cost more than the generic ones with shaft drives.
Had to change the output shaft seals once, easy job I took the shaft out and the dealer pressed in new seals.
Last shaft drive was a total PIA, chewed shafts with electrolysis in the stern gland, we finally fixed it with a Volvo lip seal.
I would prefer a shaft drive in this model boat, but there aren't many around.
Anyone had any experience in converting a sail drive to a shaft drive?

[Olddave]

Originally Posted by Bill O

I know this may be too much of an opened question, but is there any advantage to a sail drive compared to a standard shaft drive? I understand the lower vibration, etc., but from some articles I've read it seems like a sail drive requires more maintenance and may have more electrolysis issues than the standard shaft configuration.

Hoping to hear from the people that actually have had sail drives, especially with the newer sd 60.

Thanks.
Bill O.

Hi Bill
My take on sail drives. I have a 30 year old Volvo in my S&S34. I am a commercial skipper with thousands of day's operating shaft drives.
If you are going anywhere remote and have problems with your sail drive you won't be able to sort it until you can pull the boat out of the water.
I am currently returning from a cruise in the remote parts of Western Australia and have motor sailed for hundreds of hours but now have a little water getting past the output shaft seal. It's a nuisance when you are away from home.
A well aligned shaft will keep turning without dramas for many hours.
One advantage of a sail drive is that you don't have a dripping gland.
Basically, if you can avoid sail drive, do so, IMHO.
Dave

[dan swift]

We have a lagoon 410 and I would avoid yanmar sail drives. They are a poor design and yanmar's answer is to change the owners manual to say redo the clutches every 500hrs which if done by a yanmar mechanic would cost 1,500.00 each. This is only the sd 40 & 50 they say the 60 solves this problem. I will believe it, sorry I don't really believe them.

[Bill O]

Guess there isn't enough time for the SD-60s to have a track record yet? If it is true that ZF makes both the volvo and yanmar sail drives, why is there more reliability with the volvo? Amel uses volvo and "they tell you" (sales pitch) that typically only need to change the oil in the SD for normal maintenance.

Bill O.

[dan swift]

As to the question of the volvos not having clutch problems, I think it is a different way of handeling an issue, yanmar makes a change in the maintance schedule to cover the poor quality and Volvo solves the problem going forward. Just the way I see it.

[maxingout]

I prefer a straight stainless steel shaft for sailing offshore. I don't like the thought of having that great big hole in the bottom of my boat in the engine room. If the sail drive hit a whale, a shark, a container, or other floating debris, I am not sure that a sail drive would survive. I have even read about an overboard line getting tangled in a sail drive prop resulting in the sail drive getting dislodged, and the boat sinking.

When I sailed across the Indian Ocean after the global tsunami, there were giant tress floating in the water, and if one of them took out my sail drive, I would have been in major difficulty far from assistance.

We sailed through major tsunami debris off Thailand, in the Andaman Islands, and south of Sri Lanka. It wasn't small stuff. It was big stuff that would have possible catastrophic results if it engaged a sail drive.

If I was a coastal cruiser in the US with assistance readily available, I would be more comfortable with a sail drive.

MAXING OUT - JOIN TEAM MAXING OUT AS THEY SAIL AROUND THE WORLD ON THEIR PRIVILEGE 39 CATAMARAN - EXIT ONLY

[GARRYOWEN]

I haven't done any sailing yet....as an outsider looking in still it seems nutty to continue along at night with stuff like that in the water....You play the odds I suppose and just try not to think about it.

[travellerw]

Meh.. I think Bulawayo gave the only real answer here..

CF is a terrible place to ask that question as you just get a ton of "heresay" answers, or responses from people who had the nightmare scenario. We have older Volvo saildrives (MS25S) and have had no issues that were the saildrives fault. They are 14 years old and have gone 1000s of miles (our boat crossed the Atlantic 4 times).

I sit here in Martinique and look at all the boats around me. Willing to bet %50 of them have saildrives. Just some food for thought.

[Sojourner]

My Super Maramu has a saildrive that emerges from the keel.... More maintenance but at least I'm not worried about hitting a whale