Smaller Engines

[ngleadow]

As an owner of a 2010 R25 Classic, I have watched the development of the newer Rangers with interest, and have asked myself whether I would like to go 40 knots in the waters of the Gulf Islands or Georgia Strait in one of those boats. I have gone that speed when I was training for the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue, and I must admit that it was exhilarating; but in those circumstances, speed was of the essence. We also had someone at the bow whose purpose was to watch for anything in the water, for at that speed striking any object is dangerous.

Putting aside the question of why anyone wishes to race from destination to destination when on a boat cruise, or why quadrupling your hourly fuel consumption at high speeds is a desirable action; the question I am interested in asking is regarding using smaller engines on the new Rangers. In our marina we have a R23 with an enormous 200HP Yamaha attached to the end. What would its performance (speed, fuel use etc) be with a 100HP, or 50 HP? I know that those large engines can be run at slower speeds, but why purchase a whole bunch of extra horsepower that you don't need? Of course those questions assume that you aren't using your boat for search and rescue, or regularly out-running storms and bad weather.

 

[Irish Mist]

I can see having the speed to cross larger bodies of water while there is a weather window. My concern boating in the west would be not seeing one of the telephone poles and hitting it at speed. Good question though on the HP. My suspicion is that the larger HP is needed to get the boat on plane. I don't think the outboards would work the best at trawler speeds all the time.. Although maybe a diesel outboard might.

 

[jagizzi]

We all use our boats in the ways that work best for our particular set of circumstances. My wife and I have been planning for a trawler in our retirement for at least 10 years. 8 to 10 knots seems comfortable for a cruising speed and I know that we would love it.

However, things changed a bit for us such that a boat was desirable pre-retirement. Everything pointed to a faster, smaller boat in these circumstances. We can easily go to Victoria and back in a long weekend, we can leave Friday Harbor and have lunch at any of the San Juan destinations and be back in time for dinner, we can easily visit the outer islands for the day and are even considering a shortened cruise to Alaska.

Is it ideal? No. Does it suit our current needs, yes, perfectly. Do we need to be hyper vigilant when doing 20 on the water? You bet, but the increased circle of travel means that we can enjoy all that the San Juans have to offer in the long weekends as opposed to post retirement.

We will end up with a larger, slower boat eventually, but the fact that this faster version of a small tug was available to us now made owning a boat possible.

Just my 2 cents on the huge motor hanging on my R23

Jim

 

[NorthernFocus]

I'm not an advocate of either speed nor a lot of HP. But.... it has its time and place. As to how much is needed here are a couple of thoughts:
1) With surplus power you can always slow down but when HP limited there's not much you can do to go faster under a given set of conditions(while on the water)
2) Outboards are typically designed such that several models/sizes share the same basic engine/lower unit. The HP is dictated by electronics and the size of injectors. If one is contemplating purchasing one of the lower HP models in such a case it often costs very little to get the next size up and there is no size/weight penalty.

We had a C-Dory 22 for many years. The original manufacturer suggested power for that hull was 70hp(two stroke) with a max approved limit of 100. Ours was powered with a 90 (four stroke) which on flat water would push the boat faster than I was comfortable with. On the other hand it's hard to contemplate how we'd have gotten by with less power when the boat was fully loaded. The 90 that we had was the same engine as a 115 from that particular manufacturer. There were times with a loaded boat and large following seas that the 115 would have been nice to have.

What we really need is a variable ratio gear box.

 

[NorthernFocus]

We all use our boats in the ways that work best for our particular set of circumstances. My wife and I have been planning for a trawler in our retirement for at least 10 years. 8 to 10 knots seems comfortable for a cruising speed and I know that we would love it.

However, things changed a bit for us such that a boat was desirable pre-retirement. Everything pointed to a faster, smaller boat in these circumstances. We can easily go to Victoria and back in a long weekend, we can leave Friday Harbor and have lunch at any of the San Juan destinations and be back in time for dinner, we can easily visit the outer islands for the day and are even considering a shortened cruise to Alaska.

Is it ideal? No. Does it suit our current needs, yes, perfectly. Do we need to be hyper vigilant when doing 20 on the water? You bet, but the increased circle of travel means that we can enjoy all that the San Juans have to offer in the long weekends as opposed to post retirement.

We will end up with a larger, slower boat eventually, but the fact that this faster version of a small tug was available to us now made owning a boat possible.

Just my 2 cents on the huge motor hanging on my R23

Jim

Pretty sums up our recent boating life. The little C-Dory served us well when we were mostly limited to weekends on PWS during our short AK boating season. Now that we're unemployed the R25 is awesome. We used to make six to eight trips per season, mostly two to three days with one longer one each summer. Each of the past two seasons we've made six trips and about 40 nights aboard. But miles per trip are about the same as when we had the C-Dory.