Time to Throttle Back, part 2

Part one of this story discussed how fuel prices and a slumping economy have boatbuilders and designers focusing on efficiency instead of horsepower.

STAYING SINGLE
Twin engines, of course, bring a slew of benefits to the boating experience, such as redundancy for get-home power if one engine fails and better low-speed maneuverability. Plus, a single engine needs to be pushed harder to achieve the same speed as twins, so power-plant longevity factors into the equation.

The design of a typical convertible with inboard power, running along bow high and kicking up a big wake, creates a great deal of form drag because of the deep furrow it plows in the water.

On the flip side, two engines consume more fuel than one, maintenance and repair costs double, and a twin-screw setup often leaves little access in the engine room.
“In 2002, when I bought a boat with a single engine, people gave me funny looks,” says John Love, who had his Grand Banks 42, Maramor, built with a single 420-hp Caterpillar diesel. “But I think acceptance of single-engine boats is increasing. Part of that is due to the bow thruster and how much it helps.”

Pod-drive technology has softened some of the twin-engine drawbacks, says Love, a Soundings contributing writer whose May 2008 article compares his trawler with the new Zeus-powered Grand Banks 41. “The performance of pod drives is truly a quantum leap over shaft drives,” he wrote. “The smaller footprint of the propulsion machinery and its design enable optimizing its isolation from the accommodations and improving access.”

Both Volvo Penta and Cummins MerCruiser claim that boats with their systems get 20 to 30 percent better mileage than with conventional inboard setups. But the gain in efficiency is often offset by installing larger engines, says Love. “The American market has demanded a ridiculous amount of horsepower and, as a result, lower-horsepower models of these systems are not yet available,” he says.

That demand for ever-increasing horsepower may be waning, some boatbuilders say. Consumers have become more aware of fuel-burn rates, says Bill Sweetland, a salesman at Atlantic Boat Company in Brooklin, Maine, builder of Duffy boats. “A few years ago, people hardly ever asked us how much fuel a boat burns,” he says. “Now it’s a consideration.”

CHUGGING
Darren Plymale, general manager of Galati Yachts in Tampa, Fla., a Tiara, Cruisers and Viking dealer, agrees. Plymale says owners who must run their boats great distances to compete in fishing tournaments, for example, are doing so at slower speeds —12 to 14 knots — and setting aside more time to reach their destinations. “It’s called chugging,” says Plymale. “Today, it’s not chic to waste money.”

Capt. Brad Wright is a chugger. “Bosses are trying different ways to save money,” he says. “If we save the boss money, we save our jobs.” So instead of running a Viking 74 at 29 knots and burning 142 gallons per hour on a passage from Panama City to Anna Maria, Fla., he chugged at an average of 10 knots and burned only 10 gph. “I was totally blown away at the fuel savings,” says Wright. The trip took him and his four-person crew six days. It would have taken him— and crew of three — only three-and-a-half days at 29 knots, but with a much heftier fuel bill.

It’s not just the big boys looking to save fuel. Doug Logan runs a 26-foot Oldport launch with a semi-enclosed pilothouse and a cuddy cabin with V-berth and portable head. A 96-hp Isuzu diesel powers the semi-displacement boat. “It’s very easily driven and planes at about 9 knots,” says Logan, who is from Stony Creek, Conn. At 12.5 knots, the boat gets 5 nmpg, but in the last couple of years he has been keeping it at 10 knots to conserve fuel. That’s Logan’s version of chugging.

Walter Szeezil of Terra Ceia, Fla., would love to get 5 nmpg, though he’s happy getting about 2 nmpg at 27 knots aboard his Contender 27 deep-vee center console. The sweet spot for his twin 200-hp Yamaha HPDI 2-strokes is 3,200 rpm, and those are the engines that were recommended for that boat on the Contender owners’ online forum. Szeezil had considered repowering with 4-strokes, but he’s now happy he didn’t. “My Contender isn’t designed to handle the extra 250 pounds of twin 4-strokes on the transom,” says Szeezil, who ventures offshore to fish the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s certainly strong enough; the hull just porpoises too much.” Lesson: If you have the choice, pick your power carefully.

This high-performance center console will do over 60 knots with triple 300-hp engines, but don't expect the efficiency and range that you would get with a pair of diesel sterndrives in the same boat.

CHANGE IN MENTALITY
Efficiency isn’t just about spending or saving money. Just because a boat owner is well-off financially does not mean he or she is happy spending ridiculous amounts of money to run the vessel, says Larry Polster, vice president of displacement trawler builder Kadey-Krogen Yachts. “They don’t want to burn 40, 50, 60 gallons per hour,” says Polster.

He points to Kadey-Krogen’s pool of customers. A decade ago, the majority of buyers were sailors; now they account for less than half of the company’s business, he says. “People are moving to us from other powerboats,” says Polster. And fuel efficiency is a big reason why some are moving to a displacement boat. A typical motoryacht, Polster points out, burns seven to eight times the fuel to just go twice as fast as a Kadey-Krogen trawler. The Krogen 44, for example, gets 3.5 nmpg at 7 knots.

Some boaters wouldn’t dream of cruising at 7 knots, but the speed factor can be deceiving and the differences minimized, explains Polster. Think tortoise and hare. “In a trawler, you wake up and get under way,” he says. “The crew can have some breakfast, take a shower, read the paper. You have to do all of those things before getting under way when dealing with a faster planing boat.”

Larry Graf has developed a unique new powerboat that sips fuel and goes faster than 7 or 8 knots. Graf, the former president of Glacier Bay Catamarans, has launched a new company, Aspen Power Catamarans. His open 26-foot prototype is powered with a single 110-hp diesel mounted in the starboard sponson. The shape of the sponson offsets the pulling power of the right-hand propeller to maintain straight tracking. Graf calls it “Hydro-Warp” tracking. The sponson is also 35 percent smaller than the port hull, which cuts down on drag and weight. The result: At 15 knots, the boat gets an estimated 5.6 nmpg, he says.

“I wanted to create something that really fits with today’s time and fuel prices and what people were asking for,” Graf says. “It’s something I think the boating industry needs, and if someone wasn’t doing anything like this, then boating becomes an elite sport. Spending $1,000 to $2,000 on fuel on a weekend is not realistic for a lot of people.”

The first production Aspen power cat is a 28-footer powered by a 150-hp diesel, and it is scheduled for delivery in August, says Graf, whose company is based in Snohomish, Wash.

In the opposite corner of the country, Augusto “Kiko” Villalon has the same goal as Graf, but he plans to get there in a monohull — specifically, a single-screw semi-displacement boat similar to a Maine lobster boat. The boat he envisions is a single-screw34-footer with a plumb bow and narrow entry, along keel and a flat bottom. With a 315-hp diesel, it would get around 4 nmpg at 16 knots. “People need to know that if you have [a boat] that does 30 to 40 mph or more you will have large expenditures in fuel,” says Villalon, the founder of Marine Concepts in Cape Coral, Fla., which built the tooling for some of the biggest powerboat brands in the business.

The challenge for today’s boatbuilder is to instill a different philosophy in new boaters, or the “freshman class,” as Villalon calls them. “We need a freshman class that can still enjoy boating without so much speed,” he says. “[They] have to stop and smell the roses.”

Editor's Note: For more about efficiency vs. horsepower, read part 1 of this story.