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

[unbusted67]

Originally Posted by 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.

These are really good numbers!

[a64pilot]

I have not sailed around the world and likely never will.

But to speak of the old unused motor breaking.
We bought our 27 yr old boat with 500 TT on the motor, we have had it for 6 years and have put roughly 1400 hours on it.
It’s had one unscheduled maintenance event, a water pump">raw water pump impeller failed, but that was an off brand impeller that I believe didn’t fit well.
Other than that, nothing has broken on our now 33 yr old motor.

However I suspicion that I do more preventative maintenance than most.

Motors that are lightly used, don’t break more often than the ones that are, if the maintenance schedule is maintained.

Assuming an engine isn’t poorly designed or manufactured, as long as its maintained, age really doesn’t mean much if anything, seals possibly, but not hard parts.

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by 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

Keep in mind that you need to use jerry cans to get fuel in most places as there is no fuel dock. We had four diesel jerry cans. After a passage we would fill main tanks as needed from the jerry cans and refill them. We carried a folding hand cart would carry three cans at a time. Longest distance was probably 500 m with a very large hill in South Africa. Same thing with water cans.

[mcarthur]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

...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.).

So it seems 4000hrs is way off base from the small sample of respondents here (kudos for you doing it ).

Just wondering whether the error is in the percentage of time spent sailing vs motor being on (motor sailing or just motoring)? Is 75% way too high? Or is in the speed you go when motoring - is 4.5kn too low?

Either way it appears (again, rather small sample ) that around 2000hrs may be more likely. That could be a combination of course: 50% motoring and 5.5kn for example would get us to around 2200hrs. 30% motoring would bring it to 1350hrs on the motor @5.5kn. Note that we're talking nearly 1/3 of the time motoring at least.

[Tupaia]

Originally Posted by NorthernMac

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

Anchoring or leaving port and any close quarters work, both. For us this is the majority of their use. If we really really need to motor we use one engine 4.5-5 knots, 1.8-1.9 ltrs per hour. The longest we have ever run the motors continuously is 23, alternating every couple of hours. Other than that the most use has been entering atolls or among coral reefs where tacking is not possible and we needed to anchor before sun became too low to navigate. We carry 220 ltrs total plus one 20 ltr jug in case of a fuel line blockage, never had to use it or come close to running out of fuel.

10 years full time cruising, that included 6 years in the Pacific islands, put 1100 hours on each of our engines. After a total of 20 years, that included a circumnavigation, engine hours stand at 2300 per engine.

Lack of use does mean that heat exchangers need cleaning more often, impellers dry out requiring replacement and things like exhaust elbows corrode more quickly.

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

So it seems 4000hrs is way off base from the small sample of respondents here (kudos for you doing it ).

Just wondering whether the error is in the percentage of time spent sailing vs motor being on (motor sailing or just motoring)? Is 75% way too high? Or is in the speed you go when motoring - is 4.5kn too low?

Either way it appears (again, rather small sample ) that around 2000hrs may be more likely. That could be a combination of course: 50% motoring and 5.5kn for example would get us to around 2200hrs. 30% motoring would bring it to 1350hrs on the motor @5.5kn. Note that we're talking nearly 1/3 of the time motoring at least.

To me the distances you sail or so long that you can't make a big enough difference in how long it will take by motoring or motor sailing. If you sail at four knots and motor sail at six why bother? It is called a sailboat after all.

[Tupaia]

Originally Posted by AiniA

To me the distances you sail or so long that you can't make a big enough difference in how long it will take by motoring or motor sailing. If you sail at four knots and motor sail at six why bother? It is called a sailboat after all.

Completely agree motor sailing is futile, just wait for the wind. I have sat in the middle of the ocean with the sails down on a glass sea. Go for a swim or at night enjoy the stars.


It is also misleading to make estimates as to mileage covered under power as for example ours are used primarily for docking or anchoring and can run the motors for a couple hours doing this while covering zero miles.



Boats that can't sail in light winds however may have a massive %age of engine hours devoted to passage making miles.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

So it seems 4000hrs is way off base from the small sample of respondents here (kudos for you doing it ).

Just wondering whether the error is in the percentage of time spent sailing vs motor being on (motor sailing or just motoring)? Is 75% way too high? Or is in the speed you go when motoring - is 4.5kn too low?

Either way it appears (again, rather small sample ) that around 2000hrs may be more likely. That could be a combination of course: 50% motoring and 5.5kn for example would get us to around 2200hrs. 30% motoring would bring it to 1350hrs on the motor @5.5kn. Note that we're talking nearly 1/3 of the time motoring at least.

Be careful of trying to “poll” a forum to determine actual conditions.
Often times with posts it seems to become sort of a contest. I remember a few years ago some posts often spoke of how little fuel they burned, it was getting down to some posting 10 gl a year or less.
Now that may actually be what the responders were actually using, but many I believe didn’t respond because they didn’t want to hear all the ridicule about how they weren’t real sailors etc.

This was about the time that a family with small children struck out from California I believe to Hawaii, and they made the decision not to carry any extra fuel, because they were real sailors and real sailors didn’t need fuel, and I believe that a lack of fuel became an issue.

[daletournier]

I've heard the real sailor thing before, it makes me laugh.

I carry enough fuel to motor 1,000nm, never had to do that . My opinion is more fuel gives me options. I have two engines, the white ones and the grey one, I choose the appropriate one depending on weather.

Our engines are no longer auxiliary power sources, they are the other power source.

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by daletournier

I've heard the real sailor thing before, it makes me laugh.

Me too, as if it's something to be proud of, but that is typical of the sailing community i've noticed. It doesn't even mean anything. Real sailor, real walker, real ATM queuer, real ale drinker.

/Goes off to start his mighty Yanmar 3GM30.

[samoorelex]

We put on a new Yanmar common rail 56hp engine for the trip.
We left Annapolis with 50 hrs and returned with 1600 hrs 20 months later.
Annectodatally, we had an avg fuel consumption of .8 gal/hr.
We made water with our genset and put 864 hrs on it.

[teneicm]

We are are 8 years in and a little more than half way around (E coast USA to Sri Lanka). We are in a cat and have about 1900 hours on each engine. Spent a fair bit of time in SE Asia, and that really caused the hours to go up. Just for reference, from Grenada to New Zealand (almost all good trade wind sailing), we used less than 200 hours per engine.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

So it seems 4000hrs is way off base from the small sample of respondents here (kudos for you doing it ).

Just wondering whether the error is in the percentage of time spent sailing vs motor being on (motor sailing or just motoring)? Is 75% way too high? Or is in the speed you go when motoring - is 4.5kn too low?

Either way it appears (again, rather small sample ) that around 2000hrs may be more likely. That could be a combination of course: 50% motoring and 5.5kn for example would get us to around 2200hrs. 30% motoring would bring it to 1350hrs on the motor @5.5kn. Note that we're talking nearly 1/3 of the time motoring at least.

We have had our Yanmar 3JH for 27 years, which have included 55,000 miles during a circumnavigation and lots of local cruising at many places in the world and heaps of races.

We rarely use the engine for motoring, always preferring to sail if it is possible and usually it is, and virtually never "motor sail". However we do use the motor to charge the batteries, not having a genset or much renewable (solar, etc) charging capability. So, in 27 years, while cruising much of it, we accumulated lots of hours charging. Note: with a large alternator putting out over 100 amps it does provide some load for the engine so that's not all bad.

Engine History:
27 years since installation;
Total hours 6658
Hours motoring 523
Hours charging (at anchor or sailing) 6135

If we'd have had about twice as much solar I think we could have less than 1000 hours on this engine as of today, after circumnavigation and 27 years.

BTW, the engine has been excellent, with few major issues (one being a rear oil seal which had to be replaced, after 6600 hours)

[betwys1]

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?

I talked to an engine rebuilder in a small shop in SW Oklahoma/Texas panhandle area. His business was supplying pump engines in the dry lands of that area which are largely irrigated. He took production car gasoline engines, provided hard valve seats and good valves and a few other unremarkable upgrades and observed the dry land farmers would run these engines 24/7 in the season, with oil changes on the fly and would often get 10,000 hours on them before turning them back for overhaul. This is very smooth loading, at mid RPMs I think ~ 3000 rpm if memory serves; but still, I thought it remarkable.

[sv Stella Maris]

Originally Posted by 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.

Hehe. The more you use them 'correctly' the more reliable they are. I couldn't help myself. Just watched another fat charter cat drag herself with the windlass to pick up anchor. Yet both motors are on ???

The laziness and disrespect of so many paid charter crews will never cease to astonish me.

The best operation I have seen personally is Moorings out of St. Lucia. They assigned one crew full time to a boat and that was that. The Captain was intimate with the boat and the repairs weren't the usual crap. Not sure if they practice that elsewhere.

Dreamyacht Charter definitely take the most abuse from my perspective in the Caribbean; both from crews to lack of quality of repairs.