Buying my first boat- exhilarating and agonizing!

[SVKaruna]

Originally Posted by dbraymer

Lets at least get the diesel usage straight, and the hot water.

The easiest way to get hot water showers inexpensively, and routinely is to plumb a small heat exchanger into the diesel. (There are 110 hot water heaters that have this feature as well).

When you charge your batteries every day (mornings work out best, as the wind is often iffy in the morning), you will have a shot at hot water for an hour or so.

If you have an auto prop, your propeller will deploy to a pitch that will assist your sailing.

This all said, you should not plan on any tremendously optimistic diesel mileage. If you are stuck outside a harbor with the wind coming directly from the harbor, you will not get good mileage. Salinas Cruz Mexico and Hemingway Marina in Cuba are good examples.

A good rule of thumb is plan twice the typical diesel usage for what ever leg of whatever voyage you are planning.

I could generally get 1.25 gallons per hour at 6 knots in my CT47. So when I planned a 500 mile leg, with 100 gallons of diesel on board, I could theoretically go 80 hours at 6 knots which is almost the entire leg.

However prudent planning would be to keep in mind that bad conditions could reduce the mileage to maybe 2.5 gallons per hour, effectively. (this takes into account reverse currents and such as well as wrong way winds)

Practically speaking, the best way to look at this is to start off in nice weather, and try to get a couple of 150 mile sailing days in before everything starts to go to heck. If you figure you can sail 300 of the 500 miles, and then fight your way through the unexpected bad weather that always shows up, that would be 200 miles at 6 knots, say 35 hours of diesel, and that at 2.5 gallons per hour is 87.5 gallons.

In this dead reckoning, I am actually planning at a greater usage per hour because you cant easily go 6 knots unless you crank the diesel RPMs up...

I hope this helps you plan a little safer.

Also, you should always pack a couple of 6 gallon diesel jugs with trusted diesel inside. You may get unlucky and buy some diesel laden with water. This will load the filters and cause shut down and bleeding sessions.

When you finally get almost to where you are going, it might be a good plan to interrupt the diesel line and take the feed from a trusted source for the last hour or so, which will of course be at night in a serious rain storm...

Upon reading this through, the text appears to be somewhat erh, negative in nature. Please be reminded, that on a good night, with 1 million stars visible, you get to talk directly to a higher power.

Dbraymer- Thanks for passing on the heat exchanger tip. Because Karuna is over 3 hours away, I haven't been aboard since meeting with the previous owner. I'm not sure what the hot water system is and how it operates. I have three large binders to read over this winter. All the system manuals, servicing, upgrades, and engine maintenance log. I'll spend the summer cruising on Lake Ontario to keep track of diesel consumption in different conditions. Planning for double the fuel usage for any particular voyage, sounds like a great rule of thumb to follow.