Quote:
Originally Posted by alohaboat
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Damn this forum
software. Dumped my long and well thought out response! OK, let's see if I can re-do it.
Cost of
fuel is one thing that can keep you shorebound. But its not the only thing. I find that people generally won't go
boating if the get sea sick, or if the
boat smells badly. If you get sea sick or the
boat stinks, you won't go
boating even if it gets a million miles to the gallon.
The two things that contribute the most to
sea sickness are 1) not having a clear view of a lot of horizon, and 2) not having good enough ventilation (made much worse by disgusting smells).
Having a good view from the bunk can be essential! This is why many people prefer greatly to sleep on
deck.
Disgusting smells usually come from 4 sources: 1)
head, 2) mildew, 3) bilges, and 4)
fuel.
The best solution to
head smells I have found is to use Vacuflush heads with fresh
water for
flushing. A vacuflush uses only about a cup of
water per flush, so both your water supply and your
holding tank capacity is respected.
Avoiding mildew requires moisture control. This means wiping down the
shower every time you use it. I find that a "wet head" is generally better than a stall
shower, because people often will not wipe down the stall, but they know they can't avoid wiping down the entire head compartment with a wet head. Also, no carpet, especially no carpet under
deck or in lockers or any other hard to reach place. A lot of boat builders use carpet to "finish" hard to reach areas! Usually, a non-cored boat, or a boat with
plywood cores, will be prone to
condensation, and this leads to mildew.
Bilges must be kept clean and dry. As clean as your kitchen floor. This means all areas of the bilges must be very easy to access. In particular, the
bilge near the
engine and stuffing box MUST be very easy to access, because
diesel,
oil, and grease are eaten by microbes, and microbes smell very badly.
Diesel fuel can smell badly. You must have easy access to anywhere fuel flows ore is stored (filler, vent, tank, under the tank, filters, fuel valves, filters, right through to the injectors and the return lines) because ALL of these things WILL leak from time to time. You must be able to clean up the diesel completely or the diesel will soak into
wood near your
bilge. Contrary to popular myth, diesel and wet
wood (like your engine beds, stringers, frames, floors, ...) can burn like hell.
Gasoline smells much less than diesel. It evaporates, so small amounts don't soak into wood nearly as badly as diesel. And the
danger of gasoline is usually overstated, because gasoline requires a narrow range of air-fuel ratio to burn, and blowers and engine room ventilation can avoid this risk.
As for cost of operation, the key is to go slow. A
displacement hull without an immersed transom, such as a
Willard, Krogen, or nearly any sailboat, can be pushed at the sqrt(LWL) in knots VERY efficiently: e.g., 6 knots for a 36 foot waterline boat.
Hull speed tends to require about twice the fuel flow, and exceeding
hull speed gets very expensive very quickly.
For inexpensive operation, one should avoid any
hull with an immersed transom. This includes any semi-planing, fast
trawler, or planing hulls.
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