Still haven't looked yet for the sailing
training company but will. Motorsailor is a style of
boat where you can steer from inside, most sailboats don't have this, instead you sit outside in the miserable rain pretending you are having a good time - been there, done that, decided it was stupid. People tend to buy what they see around them, kind of like the
anchoring phenomena when you set your
anchor, then everyone else anchors around you, they figure you know what you are doing and they not so much.
Motorsailing vessels historically haven't been great - efficient - sailing boats, not sailing well into the
wind and often heavier, hence slower. The boats often have "heavy"
displacement hulls, the trend today is to construct hulls that aren't as heavy for the given footage. I prefer heavier hulls, generally more sea kindly.
If look at the picture on the bottom right, you will see a
helm inside the
cabin, most sailboats don't have this. In warm tropical areas, a
steering station inside probably isn't needed, but for northern climes, you are better off having one unless you enjoy suffering.
To put this into a railroading context, you can be the
engineer in the cab, out of the elements, or you can be one of those yard engineers that controls the train
engine wirelessly, in the elements, wishing you weren't alive some days - I think of those days in
Vancouver with endless pouring rain and working in that, not for me, I'm too much a whoosie. Most
boat designs reflect a southern orientation, warm with lots of sun and blue skies, in my opinion this isn't the best system in coast
Pacific Northwest, coastal BC, or
east coast realities in
Maine and
Newfoundland. There was (is?) a guy (company) out of greater
Vancouver somewhere that was designing motorsailors that behaved more like a traditional faster sailboat, I haven't been able to find anything recently about this line of boats. Maybe his idea was so rational it died an illogical death, since real boaters didn't
purchase that style of sailing, they'd rather suffer - that's what everyone does so it must be good.
I used to sail from Point Roberts to Friday Harbour with a bunch of alcoholic hospital administrators. We sailed through all the months, at one point I realized I had done more sailing in the night than in the day. I was the sober fool at the outside
helm at one in the morning, in absolute miserable conditions in November, December, January, February. Yes, those were the "good old" days. Because the ocean wasn't so kindly in those months, I learned to love a heavy
displacement hull - slower but more comfortable.
And I learned to loath sitting outside in miserable
weather. Had two buddies come up in late September of 2018 when our
weather was wet for about ten days, we were out in that. Powered over to Desolation Sound passing sail boaters who were out in the misery, more
power to them. I, the whoosie, was inside with my buddies, both sailboat types who learned the miracle of an inside
steering station, with the boat pumping out heat, and the windshield wipers going.
Electric motors with
diesel generators
work well in train engines because you aren't paying for that technology. I'm refitting my boat and for a Volve
Penta 280 gas duoprop replacement for my old
Mercury 270 hp gas
engine, when you throw everything in, will be around $43,000. To go the electric/diesel
route with new leg for the inboard/outboard, would almost double that amount so I don't go that
route, too expensive for not much advantage. Even converting to all
diesel is a much more expensive proposition and with the
price of diesel
fuel now approaching gas prices, the advantage isn't as profound as in the past.