Conversion - Sail Cruising To Power

[MMNETSEA]

Just received another extract from a friend's blog who decided after some 20 years of cruising in a sailboat - including Antarctica to sell their beloved boat and buy a power boat on which to convert and live on and explore new places and experiences. Jeanne one of our moderators almost from day one, and her husband Peter later went through a similar transition. I have many times thought of returning to power - no expensive sails, no masts and spreaders, no rigging, no booms and vangs, no blocks, no sheaves, lines, halyards and sheets, no winches. No tippy boat - day after day on a long passage. Just that comforting sound of a 4 cylinder Gardener plowing us along at a comfortable 7 knots.

Is it just the attraction of cruising using the wind for free with just the sound of the sea rushing by?

Or is there another reason?

[linnupesa]

How about looking at the gallon or two of diesel that you will burn every hour? You'll need to import that from our dear overseas fiends, pardon, I meant to say dear friends. Perhaps we'll also have to fight yet another war or two, maybe in S. America for a change, to ensure that supply. Darn, instead of "war" I again had meant to say "conflict, insurgency or nation building". It may turn out that we will just have to leave that Asian oil supply to the locals like China, India and Pakistan to squabble over, whether we may like it or not.

Smelting aluminum for making masts or synthesizing dacron for sails or lines also takes energy, but somehow it at least seems like the end justifies the means and we can feel good about it. So, if you are physically still able to, why not stick with the "stick"? Much of sailing these days is actually already more motor- than wind-driven anyhow.

In 100 years perhaps the decisions we make now will be much clearer and "duh!" with 20/20 hindsight. We do know that wind will then still be readily available. Oil again is going to be a very precious commodity and much trickier to obtain. Plus, there are a lot of better uses and even re-uses for oil than merely blowing it out of an exhaust pipe. ( recycle-able petro-products come to mind )

Ah, if someone could come up with patenting 'Wind in a Can'. Oopsy, I did not mean speaking euphemistically here. It just happened to slip out that way.

Ivo

[redbopeep]

I believe that every cruiser who cruises long enough will be faced with the decision of "do I go to a power boat or do I stop cruising." Everyone has their own perception of what they themselves should be able to do physically while cruising. And, face it, while the wind is free, your body isn't. You have to be able to manage the rig and sailing if that's what you're cruising on. Very few people are willing to actually own a boat that is a true motorsailing vessel. Most sailboats have engines called axillary...

I know a few old, old cruisers but I must admit they are few and far between and have been lucky to stay in good health.

Besides age or other physical issues, there are very real cases of people who are just lousy at sailing but yet they're fine navigators...they're good "cruisers" they 're just lousy sailors. I know a few of these folks and they laugh at their own inept sailing skills and they are smart enough to not to push their sailing skills. I often think such folk would be happier cruising with an appropriate trawler of some sort or getting into a "real" motor sailing vessel not just one with an "axillary" like most cruising boats have.

To each his own. We know that we get cranky if we have to run the engine very long. The only thing that is likely to change that would be if/when we get hard-of-hearing

[Coyote]

I doubt anyone finds powerboats to be any less tippy. Sailboats heel a bit, but tend to be much more steady. When I go fishing we run for home when the wind comes up to the point were the sailors want to be out. This doesn't perfectly apply to trawlers.

I find sailboats are more stable than a powerboat of similar displacement.

[JeanneP]

Originally Posted by Coyote

I find sailboats are more stable than a powerboat of similar displacement.

I agree, yet our trading in our sailboat for a power boat was not because it is more stable, but just less work for us as we age. And we aren't crossing oceans anymore. If we were, we'd still be in a sailboat, for sure.

I describe ourselves as "rode hard, put away wet." We are feeling our age and our accidents. Peter can't go through a security checkpoint without setting off alarms from all the metal pinning bones together. Didn't bother him when he was young, but we're not young anymore. I would hope we would have another decade of cruising in us, but it's a lot different from what we did before. However, we are both different from what we were, so, ?

There were many issues that prompted our choice, and though I miss sailing terribly, it was the right choice for us. We fly to other countries for that foreign experience, and here in the US we expend lots of energy exploring the US the way we enjoyed exploring other countries. Many people have called me naive and inexperienced for my remarks that we find people everywhere we travel to be friendly, helpful, and mostly wonderful. This applies to our explorations of the US as well as to all the other places we've been, and so we continue to plug on.

[redbopeep]

Jeanne, you now have a power catamaran so that has high initial stability and probably feels pretty stable in a wide range of conditions--no? At some point, it must diverge in terms of comfort/stability but I wouldn't know when that would be. Conversely, on the big trawlers I see all kinds of gizmos to provide stability while underway and at anchor. For sure, the displacement hulls of those particular boats are "ocean crossing" but it seems less "comfortable" whether or not less stable than a sailboat is.

[Aquaria]

Originally Posted by linnupesa

How about looking at the gallon or two of diesel that you will burn every hour?Â*Â*You'll need to import that from our dear overseas fiends, pardon,Â*Â*I meant to say dear friends.Â*Â*Perhaps we'll also have to fight yet another war or two, maybe in S. America for a change,Â*Â*to ensure that supply.Â*Â*Darn, instead ofÂ*Â*"war" I again had meant to say "conflict, insurgency or nation building".Â*Â* It may turn out that we will justÂ*Â*have to leave that Asian oil supply to the locals like China, India and Pakistan to squabble over,Â*Â*whether we may like it or not.

Smelting aluminum for making masts or synthesizing dacron for sails or lines also takes energy, but somehow it at least seems like the end justifies the means and we can feel good about it.Â*Â*So, if you are physically still able to, why not stick with the "stick"?Â*Â*Much of sailing these days is actually already more motor- than wind-driven anyhow.

In 100 years perhaps the decisions we make now will be much clearer and "duh!" with 20/20 hindsight.Â*Â* We do know that wind will then still be readily available.Â*Â*Oil again is going to be a very precious commodity and much trickier to obtain.Â*Â*Plus, there are a lot of better uses and even re-uses for oil than merely blowing it out of an exhaust pipe.Â*Â*( recycle-able petro-products come to mind )

Ah, if someone could come up with patenting 'Wind in a Can'.Â*Â* Oopsy, I did not mean speaking euphemistically here. It just happened to slip out that way.

IvoÂ*Â*

... and we just decided to live and sail without any diesel engine, relying on our stick and sails more than before. All linnupesa mentioned and the fact that all this is not good Â*for our natural environment we live and sail in,Â* drove us to this decision. And we simply Â*believe that it is not fair to use up the last resources for our leisure activities Â*- they are too valuable for that.

And we hope that we have another 20 years to do sailing and living on a sailboat before changing to a power boat Â*for inland and coastal cruising . And on the last boat shows we already found the first nice example of Â*a Â*hybrid powerboat Â*with lots of solar panes on the roof and under it an nice patio for two deck chairs.

Guess, there will be more environmentally correct alternatives, once we get there. The Swiss started Â*withÂ*Â*this boat Â* and as soon as it made its tour around the globe without any diesel, the gained experience will trickle down into ingeneering the motor boats we retire on in twenty years.Â*

Uwe

SY Aquaria, after a sailing season (1200 miles) without any fuel!

[redbopeep]

In a post I modified by accident, MMNETSEA pose this: Back to the question :-

Wonder what it costs to install a new Mast, Boom, Rigging, Sails, Winches and all the other bits and pieces on a sail-boat (including labour and profit mark up) (using a 40ft boat as an example)??

Hopefully he will repost that which I destroyed (sorry guys! sometimes we moderators can't be trusted with our twitchy fingers... )

My reply is that I wouldn't want to think about that question . It's a pretty penny! And, in today's lousy yacht market, you can buy an entire 40 ft sailboat with good sails and good rigging for less than you can install new on an existing boat that you may have dismasted, etc.

However, my opinion based upon what bits I know about sailing rigs and cruising powerboat equipment (engine plus appropriate stabilizers) is that the upfront cost would be very similar with the powerboat being a bit cheaper. Initially, if you look at just the engine cost, the powerboat would appear cheaper but if you consider stabilizers which many powerboats use to make comfortable and safe cruising possible, then the price tag on the power boat can jump quite a bit.

[Wildernesstech]

Though I am yet young (by my standards), Brenda and I have already considered the swith to power... We LOVE to sail, but she is disabled, and I have more than my share of metal pins and screws. If we do the math, I am sure that the cost of keeping fresh sails equals the cost of fossil fuel. But there are the diesel electrics to consider, and that mast we so dearly love has kept us from going quite a few places. We plan to do our long-range traveling now, and when, not if, the time for transision arrives find something that we can comfortably do the Great Loop with where we are closer to our in-coverage medical support system. As far as stability goes, we have a friend whos has sailed for 40 years who just bought a trawler this year. Not only did the motion of the boat at anchor take quite some getting used to on his part, but we rafted up with him one evening and found we quickly had to improve our fender system as he moved far more than us. A big factor for us has been that we can travel quite far under sail without a huge outlay for fuel. Honestly, on our budget we could not travel via power nearly the way we can under sail. We already own the extra sails!

[SV Silver Lining]

I wouldn't know about the cost of a mast, but I spent about $6k on rigging, $5k on my conversion to self tailing winches, $2500 on a new furler, $700 on a new vang and boomkicker, etc. On a much smaller boat I was dismasted while racing and had to spend about $10k on a new mast (Etchells). The cost wasn't in the mast itself which was about half that, but in the shipping and setup. I shudder to think of what a new mast and boom would cost for the 38 footer we have.

Originally Posted by redbopeep

In a post I modified by accident, MMNETSEA pose this: Back to the question :-

Wonder what it costs to install a new Mast, Boom, Rigging, Sails, Winches and all the other bits and pieces on a sail-boat (including labour and profit mark up) (using a 40ft boat as an example)??

Hopefully he will repost that which I destroyed (sorry guys! sometimes we moderators can't be trusted with our twitchy fingers... )

My reply is that I wouldn't want to think about that question . It's a pretty penny! And, in today's lousy yacht market, you can buy an entire 40 ft sailboat with good sails and good rigging for less than you can install new on an existing boat that you may have dismasted, etc.

However, my opinion based upon what bits I know about sailing rigs and cruising powerboat equipment (engine plus appropriate stabilizers) is that the upfront cost would be very similar with the powerboat being a bit cheaper. Initially, if you look at just the engine cost, the powerboat would appear cheaper but if you consider stabilizers which many powerboats use to make comfortable and safe cruising possible, then the price tag on the power boat can jump quite a bit.