Which Engine?

[nhschneider]

My 48´ ketch (displaces 40,000 pounds and has a 37´7" waterline) has a Volvo MD40A with over 8,000 hours on it. It´s never been overhauled and I don´t believe the head has ever been removed. It´s time to replace it. Since my wife and I do a fair amount of blue water cruising (we just got back from four months cruising the west coast of Mexico), we need something that is both rugged and economical. I´ve been looking at the Volvo D3-110 but it´s only rated for less than 300 hours of use per year. Plus, I´m not crazy about the idea of belt-driven camshafts. On top of that, it´s not available until the early fall of this year.

So, readers of this forum, what do I install? An obvious answer is the Yanmar 4JH with 110 horsepower but I´ve never been a big fan of Yanmars. There´s the Perkins M92 but that´s a questionable company, having first been sold to Caterpillar and then they sold it off. John Deere makes their 80-horsepower, 4-cylinder engine but it´s very tall and wide (plus, with the transmission, weighs over 1,000 pounds). Ideally, I´d like an engine in the 85 to 110 horsepower range that has an excellent network of dealers; is bullet-proof in it´s reliability and can fit into a relatively small space.

If this were your boat and you were going to sail beyond the horizon, what engine would you put in it? Why?