Is this Realistic, and How Much $$$ ?

[OandD4ever]

let me start by saying hi to everyone , i'm new here.
i know nothing more about boating then what i read online and saw in movies and instructional vids. so i'm working my way towards being a beginner.

i know that i like and hope to get the Sea ray 310 or the bayrunner with about the same specs.

below are the specs.

2009 Sea Ray 310 Sundancer® | Sea Ray Boats and Yachts

MY PLANS :
1, I"m planning on doing lots of fishing, inland and out a couple of miles. not that i have done much fishing in my life. but thats the plan.
2, i'm also hoping to be able to go on long cruises. go from NY to VA to FL to TX and back to NY. a trip like this would be done maybe once a year or so. if not less often
3, a trip to a nice island someplace far. would also be cool every long now and then.

the boat i'm planning on getting is a inboard 30' i know they don't get great MPG but is it realistic to be able to do these things i'm hoping to do? or is going to cost so much that i'm gonna have to be happy i'm fishing and forget the rest.

what would a long trip cost?

lets say a trip from NY to TX, how much can someone on a 30' powered cruiser expect to pay for gas?

any and all info would be greatly appreciated. really i mean any info. any at all. thanks again.

[Boracay]

Hi, and welcome to the Forum.

You seem to have several very varied aims. Without knowing you budget or personal situation it's difficult to make reasonable suggestions but here goes.

1) For fishing I'd go for a 11' RIB with a 15hp Yamaha on a trailer. Take you most places the fish are biting. Don't forget to carry a VHF radio and an EPIRB.

2) For coastal cruises I'd suggest one of the smaller diesel trawler types. Say 30 odd feet.

3) For extended blue water cruising I'd be looking at a "Blue Water" sailboat of 35' or more.

But most of all, don't spend any money until you have a very clear idea of what you want, and have chartered a few similar boats.

This is the Cruisers Forum. My personal opinion is that any petrol engine less than 20 years old should not be inside a boat. New outboards I can live with.

[forsailbyowner]

I'm working on a silverton 30 with twin 318 mopar engines. The owner states he uses about a gallon per mile. Could probably get better economy running one engine. I worked on another boat who's owner did a lot of the things you mentioned. He cruised from SC to bahamas every year and went offshore to gulfstream regularly fishing. He had a 30' pursuit with yamaha four strokes. Would imagine his economy was better.

[OandD4ever]

my personal situation is, I'm a NYC cop, i'm retireing in about 5 years, i know I wont have the money for more then one boat, so i'm aiming at a 30' cabin cruiser. for several reasons. i like the versatility, sleepers, ability to cruise long dist. and just river fish. and i don't want to be limited in what i can do. LOL, yes i know my list seams to stray all over the place. and as for Sailing. i saw an introduction / instructional DVD and it seems like a lot more work then i want to deal with so i would rather push a throttle and go.

[jm21]

My distances, knowledge, and math might be off, but I'd imagine a round trip from NY to TX in that kind of boat would probably run at least $10k with current gas prices. With podunking around and exploring a bit $15,000 in gas is probably closer.

I think you'd need a big expensive truck to tow a boat that big to inland waters and it would be a pretty excessive boat for just fishing.

I think Boracay has some good ideas...I think a used 30ish foot diesel trawler for the NY to TX trip and going out in the coastal waters, and a nice RIB for fishing would be pretty ideal. Together they would probably cost a fraction of what a new 30' Sea Ray costs. And the diesel(s) would be a lot more durable than twin gas.

Probably a good idea to charter a boat for 2-3 weeks to see if you like cruising.

[OandD4ever]

HHHHHHooooolllllllllyyyyyyyyyy Sheeet. that's a lot of money. looks like we're getting a 20something searay or bayliner. we still would like a cabin cruiser with sleeping quarters. so no open seas, LOL, i guess i won't miss what i never had. LOL

so lets say i get a 24 footer, i'm sure it would use mush less fuel and we can still go out a couple of miles for fishing and weekend trips RIGHT????

[jm21]

I'm not much of a power boater, so this is all coming from what I've read and a few personal experiences, so take it with a huge dose of salt until someone more knowledgeable comes along...I also live on the west coast so estimating the distances.

For a planing hull (the boats you're talking about here), the fuel efficiency starts out very low, but as it gets on a faster and faster plane the efficiency goes up. Of course, you have to also take into consideration the RPMs the engine is running at and what RPMs are ideal for efficiency, as well as whether the boat has one or two engines. So it is my understanding that the heavy cabin cruisers and fast flybridge powerboats with twin engines cruising at around 20-25mph are about the least efficient boats you can buy. It seems like they get .5-2 mpg depending on how big they are, again, from what I've read. The high performance boats go at significantly higher speeds and seem to be able to get as good as 4mpg or so with a single engine, but have very spartan interiors.

The ICW runs from NJ to Brownsville which is 3,000 miles. If you went the whole way that's a long ways by boat. Even if you were cruising at 4mpg if you went by boat both ways that's 6,000 miles and 1,500 gallons of gas. At 1mpg it's 6,000 gallons.

Displacement boats (sailboats and most trawlers) are much more fuel efficient. With a displacement hull it's very efficient at lower speeds but as you push the hull speed it becomes exponentially less efficient. So, my 27 foot sailboat with a 9.9hp outboard cruises at about 5.5 knots (6.3 mph) and maybe uses a gallon of fuel per hour tops (I've never measured it, probably uses less). A diesel inboard would be maybe as much as 2-3 times as efficient. Trawlers are a lot more efficient than planing powerboats but generally less efficient than sailboats. Maybe 7 knots (8mph) at 1.5 gph for a 30ish foot trawler? So a 30ish foot sailboat with an inboard diesel gets maybe 12-15mpg and a trawler gets maybe a bit over 5mpg. Of course a 30 foot trawler has a lot more space than a 30 foot sailboat...

Anyways, lots of factors to consider but maybe you can sort of see why people tend to prefer sailboats or trawlers for long distance voyages.

Then you've gotta consider that 3,000 miles at 6-8mph is a longgggg trip.

[s/v 'Faith']

Originally Posted by OandD4ever

HHHHHHooooolllllllllyyyyyyyyyy Sheeet. that's a lot of money. looks like we're getting a 20something searay or bayliner. we still would like a cabin cruiser with sleeping quarters. so no open seas, LOL, i guess i won't miss what i never had. LOL

so lets say i get a 24 footer, i'm sure it would use mush less fuel and we can still go out a couple of miles for fishing and weekend trips RIGHT????

Strangely, you will not see the kind of gains you would expect until you get small enough that you would not be (likely) to be comfortable.

The boats you list are not often used for the purpose you are looking at. The Sea Ray / Bayliner crowd are, for the most part, weekend users, long weekend overnighters, or local cruisers. Some of the larger Sea Ray lines are used for longer trips but fuel cost is a major consideration.

The nice thing (one of them) about cruising is that your schedule is much more flexible. It is the best way to travel, many would say the ONLY way to travel SAFELY. (faster boats can buy some security, but a go-fast attituude is not sustainable in cruising long distances IMHO.

I won't try to convince you that you should seek to get on a sailboat, but you really should. The pace is not much slower then a displacement powerboat, and your $/mile range can be soooo much greater.

Take some time to walk some docks... if you want to read a book that might be helpful buy a copy of "Honey, Let's Get a Boat...": A Cruising Adventure of America's Great Loop


You may not plan to do what they did, but they do a good job talking about how they choose their boat, and how it worked out for them.

WRT Fishing... my sailboat catches fish just fine. The fish can not tell the difference.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do.

[Chief Engineer]

I have a couple LEOS that have gone the sailboat route vs big powerboats.

[stevensc]

I bought my boat a Monk 36' trawlerwith 220 hp Cummins diesel near Annapolis bought her down the east coast then accross Florida via Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico up the coast to Mobile bay Alabama. Cut accross the gulf from Anclote Key(near tarpon Springs) to Appalachicola
The trip was about 1870 statute miles, we consumed 558 Gallonds of diesel including 94 hours of generator use our cruise speed is usually about 7.5 knots.
I hope this will be helpful.
Steve W.

[OandD4ever]

you mentioned security, what about Firearms on board? how do the laws apply or not apply? as a cop i'm allowed to carry, and consider my firearm part of my clothing, i don't leave home with out it.

[jms9]

Sounds like my story in reverse. I am about to retire from Houston PD and will be headed east. We hope to follow the Gulf Coast around Florida across to the Bahamas and then further up the east coast. Eventually up the Hudson to Lake Champlain maybe the Great Loop if we have time. We will fish the entire way!

I have been preparing for the last year. I have had numerous small powerboats over the years and we are on the water very frequently. We looked at power and sail trying to decide what to get. There are a lot of factors to consider but ours was fuel cost. Last year diesel fuel was outrageous and even though it has come down some, it will rise again. A small trawler was our first choice. Even the most economical trawler we looked at was in the 4 mpg range and coincidently, that was at just about the speed of a sailboat. I just could not justify spending so much money on something I could not afford to actually use regularly. So...sailboat.

I had never sailed a day in my life so it took awhile to figure out what to look for so we could learn to sail. We did a lot of dock walking, web surfing and reading. Early this year I found a 30 foot S2 cruiser sailboat, very reasonably priced and well it just looked like it was meant to be on the water; balanced, sleek, safe. We had a survey done and the surveyor took it out for a "test ride". About 10 mins into the sail the surveyor was obviously puzzled as to my lack of sailing knowledge and asked how much sailing experience I had. I replied "about 10 minutes" he laughed and began explaining how everything worked. It was a dizzily, chilly (down here that means anything less than 75 degrees), nasty kind of day and the sail lasted about an hour and a half. I bought the boat that day! We are teaching ourselves to sail which I would not recommend, take lessons, and have gotten to the point that we are very comfortable with our boat. I have thoroughly enjoyed each venture we have made into the bay of Galveston, truly the worst day sailing is better than the best day at work. In a few weeks we will make our first overnight sail and we are planning a week long sail in November or December (it doesn't get chilly till late December). Sometime around June of next year I will retire and we will cast off. We like our current sailboat so much that I think she will be the one we travel on, a bit cramped but she just feels right.
Anywhere in US waters or international waters your ok with a firearm aboard. We intend to spend some time in the Bahamas where you are required to declare the weapon and ammunition and then keep it securely locked aboard. Every country has different laws you will have to check them out before you depart.

Don't let the sense that sailing is a lot of work fool you, it is only as much work as you make it. Do yourself a favor pick out a nice day and take a cruising size sailboat out for sail. There are a number of differences between power and sail, there is nothing wrong with either, but there is a difference. It is a difference that you can literally feel and you will know pretty quickly if sailing is for you.

There are many websites, voyage logs, and just plain nice folks out there to help you along. Let me know if your interested and I can send you some links.

[OandD4ever]

ok, you almost sold me on at least looking into sailing more. like i said above that video really made me feel sailing would be just to much work, and I'm a hands on type of guy. and my version of DIY is really Do it By Myself, so i wouldn't want to have to be obligated to keep a couple of people with me just so i can use my own boat.

[forsailbyowner]

I kinda chuckle when people say sailing is a lot of work. Most of my cruising involves raising sails ,trimming them,setting autopilot then settling down with a good book. Sometime go for days with just an occasional tweak on sails. The videos you were watching were probably racers who are always running with too much canvas and fighting for tenths of a knot.

[jm21]

Yes, really. Once you have a little practice you should be able to easily sail a 30ish foot sailboat by yourself without much effort. Most sailboats have fairly small rigs for their displacement so they're easier to handle for the typical cruiser.

Motoring for 6 hours at 5-7 knots is about as boring as you get imho. Having some sails to tweak every now and then gives you something to do, keeps you a little more alert, is quite a bit more exciting, feels faster (and in a good wind actually is faster), and passes the time. I can't imagine motoring for that many miles. One problem might be that monohull sailboats heel over which some people do not like and if things aren't secure below they can go flying.