You sailed around the world, how many hours did you put on your engine?

[unbusted67]

I run a pretty busy charter boat and we average about 1100 hrs a year on your cummins. I notice that this engine requires significantly less maintenance than a typical sailboat engine motoring 50 hours or less a year.

We have 6000 hours on the cummins and so far it has just needed standard maintenance, a few hoses, a new dampener plate. We are just now redoing the mounts. Do you find when actively cruising your engine needs less attention than when being used only seasonally?

[slug]

Originally Posted by unbusted67

I run a pretty busy charter boat and we average about 1100 hrs a year on your cummins. I notice that this engine requires significantly less maintenance than a typical sailboat engine motoring 50 hours or less a year.

We have 6000 hours on the cummins and so far it has just needed standard maintenance, a few hoses, a new dampener plate. We are just now redoing the mounts. Do you find when actively cruising your engine needs less attention than when being used only seasonally?

That’s about right

I put on 800 to 1000 hrs and cover about 10,000 miles per year . Mercedes , MTU straight 6

I’ve run a inline 4 cummins to 20000 hrs with no problems

Good engine

Hard to say what your preventive maintenance should be

Engine mounts , high pressure fuel lines, pumps, coolers , exhaust , soft hose , alternators and thier mounts ...are all items to keep an eye on

Be alert to the flywheel ring gear.. grease it each year to prevent starter engagement wear

Output shaft oil seals dont last forever

[mcarthur]

Hmm, well World ARC reckons a circumnavigation is about 25,000nm.

Now the use of sails versus motor is going to be different for different people. The best you'll get is a reasonable average, but there will always be a high standard deviation: some people don't even have motors and others barely use the ones they have.

From my reading and chatting, it seems that it isn't unreasonable to say that many long distance cruisers use their motors anything from 60% to 80% of the time. That doesn't mean motor-only, not sailing BTW! If you want to be scientifically inaccurate without actual data, you could generalize terribly to 75% of the time. There will be many at 20%, and some at 80%+, but the mean appears to be well over the 50% mark.

So for 25,000nm, and 75% of the time, the answer is that the average circumnavigator (and there aren't that many!) has done 18,000nm on their engines, (often including sailing!) and 7,000nm under sail-only.

To get an hour figure, we could assume a sailing boat engine pushing at a conservative 4.5kn (huge assumptions), so 18,000nm = 4,000hrs on a single engine (ignoring cats with 2 engines but motoring only on one).

So a sailing circumnav may put 4,000hrs on a diesel. This could be done over a year (ouch that's fast) or 30 years+. There's simply no data I've seen on how long circumnavigations take on average, and I suspect the data would be so dirty as to be meaningless (people stopping and starting, changing boats part way, etc.).

Now most of the motors on sailing yachts are small diesels, and the small-ness usually comes from being more modern common rail. 4000hrs on a common rail turbo is a decent amount but not half-life.

Not answering the OP's question, but mathematical funnery nonetheless...

[Seman]

We have done 48 000 nm, crossing the Indian ocean and 5 Atlantic crossings.
1156hrs on each motor on our cat.

[michaelratinter]

I have a 1972 Perkins 4.236 that was installed in Blind Faith in 1980. I bought BF in 2015 and in the past five years I have changed oil, oil filters, lift pump, and starter. Three years ago I had List Marine do a major service including replacement of the mixing elbow.

I operate the engine for 8 hours every two weeks. Plus did a lot of motoring bashing back from the baja haha last decenber. Ran the engine for 66 hours straight from Asuncion to Ensenada

[mikedefieslife]

I've but 500 hours on my engine 3GM30 since March 2019.

I have also travelled around 6-7k miles. 150 of those hours were on the Atlantic crossing for various reasons. No winds, charging etc..

I'm not one to sit around and sail at 2 knts like I see some doing (their choice). If I can't sail at least around 4.5 knts then I will motor or motorsail.

[NorthernMac]

I think demographics of those who maintain large Diesel engines vs lots of sailboat engines viewed as auxiliary power might play some factor.
This, kinda reminds me of a topic I posted about running engine gauges vs just dummy lights, and cutting oil filters during oil changes.

[NorthernMac]

Originally Posted by Seman

We have done 48 000 nm, crossing the Indian ocean and 5 Atlantic crossings.
1156hrs on each motor on our cat.

Just curious from talking to other cat owners, do you run both engines for endurance or just one?

[Huskybeer]

Originally Posted by unbusted67

I run a pretty busy charter boat and we average about 1100 hrs a year on your cummins. I notice that this engine requires significantly less maintenance than a typical sailboat engine motoring 50 hours or less a year.

We have 6000 hours on the cummins and so far it has just needed standard maintenance, a few hoses, a new dampener plate. We are just now redoing the mounts. Do you find when actively cruising your engine needs less attention than when being used only seasonally?

It is my experience that the normal diesel when used more will last longer.

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

Hmm, well World ARC reckons a circumnavigation is about 25,000nm.

Now the use of sails versus motor is going to be different for different people. The best you'll get is a reasonable average, but there will always be a high standard deviation: some people don't even have motors and others barely use the ones they have.

From my reading and chatting, it seems that it isn't unreasonable to say that many long distance cruisers use their motors anything from 60% to 80% of the time. That doesn't mean motor-only, not sailing BTW! If you want to be scientifically inaccurate without actual data, you could generalize terribly to 75% of the time. There will be many at 20%, and some at 80%+, but the mean appears to be well over the 50% mark.

So for 25,000nm, and 75% of the time, the answer is that the average circumnavigator (and there aren't that many!) has done 18,000nm on their engines, (often including sailing!) and 7,000nm under sail-only.

To get an hour figure, we could assume a sailing boat engine pushing at a conservative 4.5kn (huge assumptions), so 18,000nm = 4,000hrs on a single engine (ignoring cats with 2 engines but motoring only on one).

So a sailing circumnav may put 4,000hrs on a diesel. This could be done over a year (ouch that's fast) or 30 years+. There's simply no data I've seen on how long circumnavigations take on average, and I suspect the data would be so dirty as to be meaningless (people stopping and starting, changing boats part way, etc.).

Now most of the motors on sailing yachts are small diesels, and the small-ness usually comes from being more modern common rail. 4000hrs on a common rail turbo is a decent amount but not half-life.

Not answering the OP's question, but mathematical funnery nonetheless...

These numbers don't seem at all right to me. On our circumnavigation of 36,000 nm over four years we put about 800 hours on our Westerbeke. I don't think this is that unusual, most of the time you are in the trade winds and off the wind so if your boat is not a slug you can sail almost all of the time, ITCZ excepted where it can be very slow. From Bali to South Africa the only times the engine was on was for entering and leaving harbours/anchorages at Christmas I, Cocos-Keeling, Rodrigues and Mauritius. I should add we never needed to run the engine for electrical generation since our wind and solar were sufficient for our needs.

[mvweebles]

Of the people who responded with circumnavigation and assuming 6kts on average over 30k-48k nms, looks like average is around 11%-14% of their hours were under power and assumes they didn't run engines at anchor.

Impressive. Outside of sailboats that carry very little fuel tankage, it's better than I would expect, especially given I see so many sailboats with Jerry Cans strapped to their lifelines. Doesn't sound like they need them very often.

Peter

[pelicans]

Our circumnavigation took 5yrs, 32,000nm. We put 2427hrs on the diesel in that time.



We had a Lehman 135 which only ever needed regular maintenance - oil changes, filters etc. Never let us down. Before we left we changed the heat exchanger, the water pump and had the injectors/injection pump serviced.


Prior owners had also lived aboard for years and circumnavigated, so I suspect the engine had always been regularly used and well maintained. Definitely the secret to a long and happy life for a diesel.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by NorthernMac

Just curious from talking to other cat owners, do you run both engines for endurance or just one?

It may be debatable if you save fuel at a given speed on one engine vs two. It's beyond debate that you put twice as much time on your engines if you routinely cruise with both vs one. For that reason I don't know of anyone who routinely cruises long distances on both engines in a sailing cat. Heck many Coast Guard cutters I deployed on cruised on one engine unless they really needed to get somewhere.

[daletournier]

I'm 3,400nm from finishing a circumnavigation, I've put 1,200 hrs on the engine. I could of put more or less , depends on how much patience I have at any given time.

[Chotu]

Your theory is correct. It’s unused things of all kinds that go bad on boats.

The more you use them, the more reliable they are.