DSK wrote in message ...
Single. I prefer the fuel economy & lower maintenance, plus there's a lot more room down in the
engine room.

Joe wrote:
Thats ok unless you lose one engine.

Doesn't worry me.... since I can spend all my engine maintenance on one engine instead of two, I have
at least twice the reliability.

Not so Doug. If you had 2 engines you would have twice the experience
maintaining that type of engine. You would be twice the mechanic.


Plus, the usual causes of engine failure are either fuel or battery
related, so having two engines would not help.

If you lose one in at a critical time, its nice to have a back-up.
Like coming in a jetty,ect....


IMHO the idea of a "get-home" engine is simply marketing to insecurity & ignorance. It is only extra
weight, extra drag, extra expense, extra gear crammed into the machinery space... and extra
maintenance made more difficult by poor access.

I somewhat agree with you, a good detroit 4 71N is hard to kill and
very reliable. But myself, I would not buy a trawler with just one
engine.



And of-course twins manuver 400 times better.

Nah, only about 350X
There are a few boats I have looked over that had enough room for a sensible two-engine lay out, but
the added expense & maintenance is still a downer for me.

Yeah thats the down side for sure, Perhaps a motor sailing vessel is
best all the way around huh?




Not me I like to crowd the really expensive yachts and watch the
yachtmasters
blow there tops. If its a stbd side to docking, I have no fear. I like
to do the Capt Ron style landing, my brit boat had a stbd side helm
which makes it easy for me to single hand land her and tie her up if
needed . BTW Capt Rons Boat is a local boat here.

I've only been handling this power boat for about a year, so I don't really have the experience to
play around the same way I would in a sailboat. A couple weeks back, I docked a friends 40+ sailboat
singlehanded in a bit of cross wind, it seemed like old times.

Do you have flanking rudders on your boat? Lonie here in the yard is
converting a Navy 50 foot liberty boat and it has a nozzle located in
front of the prop. It rotates the same as the rudder,if the navy
adopted it it must make a difference. Flanking rudders make all the
difference in the world on a single screw and do not add that much to
the cost of construction. I ran a single screw tug for years pushing a
220 foot fuel flat on the ICW here in Texas. It had flanking rudders
and doubled the handling ability, still I wished it was a twin screw.

BTW There is a sweet Bruce Robert 50 foot Trawler here in the marina
selling for 55K. Steel hull and a 6-71TI detroit and Isuzu 12K gen
set. The owner is a airframe inspector and has kept the inside of the
hull as clean as the airframe on a flying 747. Wish I had the extra
cash to support two boats for a while.
He's the one with the fuel polishing system.

Joe
MSV RedCloud


Fresh Breezes- Doug King