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Diesel electric
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#2
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Diesel electric
On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:49:12 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote: On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 08:45:38 +0700, wrote: Not to start a war, but I still don;t understand why you want sails and two motors... Well, they weren't my specs but I can understand the motivation. Let's start with the premise that a boat needs aux propulsion for various good reasons - entering harbors; short handed sailing with one or two people; lack of wind; wind in wrong direction; schedules to meet; broken furling gear; etc. These things all occur in real life as opposed to the "ideal". Let's additionally assume that a modern 60 foot boat also needs a generator to provide power for air conditioning, refrigeration, freezers, emergency battery charging, entertainment equipment, microwave oven, etc. So that's one way of getting to two engines that most folks on a well appointed 60 footer would not argue with. I guess that my point was that since we are talking about a 60 ft. displacement boat two engines aren't going to push it much faster then hull speed anyway so why two. Now that you've got two engines, how do you provide backup functionality if one breaks down? Hence my suggestion for heavy duty alternators on each allowing them to do double duty as power generators and back each other up in that role. In addition, I would also equip the second engine with an off center shaft and folding/feathering prop which allows it to serve as back up to the primary aux engine. Modern boats with modern conveniences have a lot of complexity, and the more redundancy the better in my experience. My own cruising boat these days is a trawler with all the back up systems I can manage - twin engines, twin generators, multiple battery banks, and multiple charging sources. The idea being to eliminate as many single points of failure as possible, be able to cruise in the boondocks with confidence, and to keep the boat going until we can reach a suitable repair facility. So far the strategy has paid off. In three years of ownership and 10,000 miles of cruising we have experienced two unscheduled shutdowns of main engines and numerous generator issues, none of which were show stoppers because of the backup systems on the boat. I can't fault your thinking. We were coming bringing a boat back from Singapore to Phuket last September, coming out of Langkawi Harbor and were on the Fly Bridge. My wife commented, rather calmly I thought, "The boat is full of smoke." I looked down the hatch and IT WAS! Haven't moved so fast in years and trying to remember where the closest fire extinguisher is.... Got the engine hatch open and no flames but a lot of smoke. Shut down both engines and jumped down in the engine room (compartment). No fire that I can see but the bilges are pretty full. It turned out that the S.B. exhaust elbow broke letting exhaust and raw water into the boat. I got everything closed and pumped out and we motored sedately back to our original anchorage on one engine. Redundancy IS good. Bruce in Bangkok (brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom) |
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Hybrid Mode
