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Old 15-12-2013, 14:16   #46
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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But it is a question of money for some people. ...............
I'm sure you're right. There are so many different styles of cruising and expectations.
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Old 16-12-2013, 10:16   #47
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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I was surprised. That was almost as noisy as my 80-horsepower John Deere diesel engine.
Many full displacement, single engine 50+ ft trawler have the range to cross oceans. However, very few boaters need/want to pay for a long range blue water sail boat or trawler. One of the biggest reason is the large fuel tanks, 1000+ gallons and the engine, 75 to 150 hp tends to sip fuel, 2+ miles per gallon. They are sort of like a sail/motor sailor with out the sails. De mast a sail boat and you sort of have a full displacement single engine trawler, or added sail to the trawler and you sort of have a motor sailor.

Mark's trawler and our trawler are examples of the type of trawler.
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Old 19-12-2013, 06:27   #48
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

Went through the same questions, wife wanted motor, I wanted sail.

We compromised and bought a Cat - she can motor as well as trawler and sails as well.

Plus a lovely space to live on at anchor
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Old 19-12-2013, 14:16   #49
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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Originally Posted by rw58ph View Post
The average boater might boat 100 hours per year if that.
You reckon? If so, that's making us feel very, very fortunate indeed.

We wonder, however, whether 100 hrs/year may be on the low side, especially for (as here?!?) 'cruisers'...

...and, back on thread, as those hours go up so does (in our view anyway) the difference in operating costs between motor and sail. We spend vastly more than 100hr/year -- 5-6 months per year, full-time, would be about right for us -- on the water covering lots (thousands) of sea miles...and we fuel up once a year. True, sails require basic maintenance and replacements with use, but so do engines.

Each to their own though.
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Old 19-12-2013, 15:49   #50
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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SNIP

The average boater might boat 100 hours per year if that. At hull speed that is 4 gallon per hour is 400 gallon X 4.00/gallon is $1,600.00. This year we put 7 hours on the engines so we spend a total of $120.00. Compared to the toal cost of owner ship of about 10 grand. Not a big %.

SNIP
The problem with an average boater is you can never find one when you need one. Your seven hours on your engine seems close to what I have put on my engines this year. But I have put hundreds of my hours on my sails. On one recent six week trip I burned around three gallons and most of that was probably while setting or lifting the anchor or raising or lowering sails.

To some extent CF posters are like the children in Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
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Old 19-12-2013, 16:06   #51
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

Steve Dashew (who has been AROUND and puts on many sea miles) figured that total, long term cost per mile was less for a pure displacement power boat than for a sail boat. His numbers came from rather large boats where his sails and rigging were more expensive than some that we use. I asked him if he thought there was a size where there might be a break and smaller sail boats may be less expensive than power due to lower tech sails ect. He said he didn't have any hard numbers for that but said that it would be interesting to run the numbers on some 35 and 40 foot range boats. Do note that the average sail cruiser used to use the engine somewhere around 70% of the time while passage making. With the increased use of solar panels this number may be coming down but I haven't seen any recent data.

I've often thought that one of the larger sail boats with rig issues would make a very efficient power cruiser. Sell the rig and a good portion of the lead keel......
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Old 19-12-2013, 16:22   #52
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

There is a third class of boat, called the solar-motor yacht, that can make its fuel from the sun and wind.
Consider new mast, rigging, sails can cost from $20k to $50k and then ask how much fuel can you buy for $20,000 ?
Now figure how much electricity you can generate from $10k in solar panels and wind generators.
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Old 19-12-2013, 16:36   #53
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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the average sail cruiser used to use the engine somewhere around 70% of the time while passage making
That 70% is another figure that's vastly different to our experience. Ours would be much, much lower, perhaps 10 or no more than 20% judging by our log and allowing for (what is by far our greatest incidence of engine use) maneuvering around shore placement(s). Our long 'delivery' passage (Italy to OZ, via the Panama Canal) covered just under 14,000nm and consumed ~1400L of fuel, but a lot of the fuel on that voyage was for the generator...and we now (after installing cracker SunPower solar panels!) rarely use the generator.

It is true that it costs a lot to replace sails and rigging, but how often is that needed? ...and would it really be all that different to the inevitable repairs and replacements that would be involved with engines covering similar sea mile distances??

It seems to us that there's a lot of speculation here. Perhaps we can all agree that all boats cost a bit () to maintain...and beyond that, it's each to their own!
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Old 19-12-2013, 16:54   #54
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

D & D your figures seem low to me but then again you are not spending much time in coral areas up and down coastal Aus. Diving amongst the GBR and coral sea I would expect quite a lot of engine hours.

Talking to both Lagoon4us and Coltar who both had L440's in the med this year they both did quite a few engine hours.

North of Aus, through PNG, Indonesia, Phillipines and east/west close to the equator I would plan on a lot of engine hours.

Really comes back to your area of operation and type of vessel use and can vary significantly.

Cheers.
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Old 19-12-2013, 17:59   #55
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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D & D your figures seem low to me but then again you are not spending much time in coral areas up and down coastal Aus. Diving amongst the GBR and coral sea I would expect quite a lot of engine hours.

Talking to both Lagoon4us and Coltar who both had L440's in the med this year they both did quite a few engine hours.

North of Aus, through PNG, Indonesia, Phillipines and east/west close to the equator I would plan on a lot of engine hours.

Really comes back to your area of operation and type of vessel use and can vary significantly.
Fair comments.

We were, however, responding to figures "while passage making"...and with that perspective we're not sure whether times spent in pursuit of diving opportunities in the reefs (which we don't do) would be relevant.

We can't really comment much about the other L440's in the Med. We pretty much straight-line sailed from Italy to Gibraltar with no stops. That said, the wind -- It was winter -- was certainly not very helpful so we did a lot of tacking in the Med, but we never troubled the engines as long as we could maintain >4kn.

Our engine usage figures would now reflect passage making along the OZ coast (which includes 'coral areas' of course) and then sitting mostly on anchorages; the latter now requiring no engine time at all, thanks to the solar panels.

Our percentages were guesstimates only so they're certainly not precise. Fuelling up roughly once a year is right for current usage though and those refuels never involve anywhere near the full (650L) tanks...and that, combined with reasonable sea miles travelled, seems to confirm some relatively low figure of engine use while passage making.
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Old 19-12-2013, 18:10   #56
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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North of Aus, through PNG, Indonesia, Phillipines and east/west close to the equator I would plan on a lot of engine hours.
We agree completely.

For our Italy-OZ voyage, we carried 10x20L bottles of additional diesel and we topped up the main tanks with every stop along the way. Thanks to some excellent trade winds and (especially) some light, but very helpful breezes through the doldrums, we never the touched diesel reserve...but it sure felt good to know it was there...
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Old 19-12-2013, 18:39   #57
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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Originally Posted by nimblemotors View Post
There is a third class of boat, called the solar-motor yacht, that can make its fuel from the sun and wind.
Consider new mast, rigging, sails can cost from $20k to $50k and then ask how much fuel can you buy for $20,000 ?
Now figure how much electricity you can generate from $10k in solar panels and wind generators.
It's not as if you were comparing apples to oranges. It's more like comparing an apple seed to an orchard! Why ask about spending a comparison to 20 to 50 thousand on sails and rigging? In my real world I've spent about 10 thousand dollars on sails and rigging over my 42 years of live aboard cruising. I have also spent $2,500 on solar and wind power generation. So, for those of us spending an average of $312/year on sails, rigging, wind and solar; what's the big attraction of $10,000 laid out for generating electricity?
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Old 19-12-2013, 19:20   #58
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

Good discussion. I think solar power has reduced a lot of engine time. And CaptForce makes a good point. The Dashews went around in a 50 fiberglass sailboat boat then developed the Wind Horse series. They must be in their 70s now and have lived most of their lives afloat. His cost per mile numbers are very believable to me as they are very long term and he pays incredible attention to detail. That said his numbers come from bigger boats than most of use have and the sails and rigging cost goes up exponentially with boat size. I don't know if it is fact but I read that most of the maxi sail yachts only use their sails when the owners are on board. Deliveries are under power to save the expensive sails....
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Old 19-12-2013, 19:35   #59
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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It's not as if you were comparing apples to oranges. It's more like comparing an apple seed to an orchard! Why ask about spending a comparison to 20 to 50 thousand on sails and rigging? In my real world I've spent about 10 thousand dollars on sails and rigging over my 42 years of live aboard cruising. I have also spent $2,500 on solar and wind power generation. So, for those of us spending an average of $312/year on sails, rigging, wind and solar; what's the big attraction of $10,000 laid out for generating electricity?
In my real world, I haven't already bought a boat with mast, sails, rigging,
so when building a 44-52ft catamaran, I WILL have to buy them if I wanted sails.
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Old 20-12-2013, 05:21   #60
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Re: Sailboat or motor yacht?

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In my real world, I haven't already bought a boat with mast, sails, rigging,
so when building a 44-52ft catamaran, I WILL have to buy them if I wanted sails.
Yes, building your own original vessel is a different world from buying one that is equipped and over ten years old at the start. I'm fortunate to be able to cruise as I do and spend so little. There's also a huge difference in the expenses when you adapt to a smaller boat. Maybe what we are really looking at are great differences in wealth.
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