It’s been six months since I bought my first cruising motor boat, a full displacement timber hull 50’ x 16’ x 6’with a single 6lxb Gardner engine and during this time I’ve clocked up 336 engine hours, including a delivery run of 400 nm and a 1500 nm cruise to Tasmania and back for the Wooden Boat Festival.
This isn’t my first timber boat and I’m aware of the onerous maintenance issues, but I prefer one-off designs and accept that this sometimes means timber.
Looking back at my initial worries about leaping into a motor boat for coastal cruising, I think I’ve learned a couple of things.
Given a bit of patience, close quarter manoeuvring with my single engine fifty footer is indeed pretty straight forward. The bow thruster sometimes helps.
Full, wide side decks with direct access from the wheel make the boat easy to bring alongside and very usable at anchor.
Although they weren’t on my original wish list, now I think stabilisers are almost a necessity for longer coastal passages.
Pulling off all the zincs and replacing them with half the number of Maddox blocks seems to have fixed the galvanic/electrolysis problems.
The heavy RIB tender is a pain bouncing around at sea and a handful to land on a beach, but it’s terrific for exploring remote destinations, so I’m now hanging on to mine.
The ancient Gardner engine started out being a bit of a threat, but it turns out of course that it only needs what they all need - fuel, air, oil and water. We are now at peace with each other.
Adding strong hand rails alongside the engine was a very good move - especially when topping up oil at sea.
The aft cabin is small for a fifty footer, but its small size allows a larger, more useable aft deck. In fact the older less efficient accommodation plan is not crowd compatible, but seems safer to move about at sea.
The program of cutting plenty of access hatches in the hull ceiling planks has paid off a couple of times and I will continue cutting, even to the extent of replacing heavy single hatches with multiple lighter ones.
I thought I’d miss not having a flying bridge, but not yet.
I don’t miss cruising under sail at all.
The first six months have generated even more questions, but I’ll ask those in another thread.
Cheers, John
P.S. Any concepts of ‘brand’, ‘asset’, ‘residual value’ or ‘return on investment’ pushed by purveyors of plastic are a bit of a mystery to me. In my experience boat ownership is a constant cash liability, balanced by regular injections of total enjoyment, so I don’t feel the need to defend timber or argue engine economics too seriously – it just happens that (so far) this boat suits me and my way of staying afloat.
This isn’t my first timber boat and I’m aware of the onerous maintenance issues, but I prefer one-off designs and accept that this sometimes means timber.
Looking back at my initial worries about leaping into a motor boat for coastal cruising, I think I’ve learned a couple of things.
Given a bit of patience, close quarter manoeuvring with my single engine fifty footer is indeed pretty straight forward. The bow thruster sometimes helps.
Full, wide side decks with direct access from the wheel make the boat easy to bring alongside and very usable at anchor.
Although they weren’t on my original wish list, now I think stabilisers are almost a necessity for longer coastal passages.
Pulling off all the zincs and replacing them with half the number of Maddox blocks seems to have fixed the galvanic/electrolysis problems.
The heavy RIB tender is a pain bouncing around at sea and a handful to land on a beach, but it’s terrific for exploring remote destinations, so I’m now hanging on to mine.
The ancient Gardner engine started out being a bit of a threat, but it turns out of course that it only needs what they all need - fuel, air, oil and water. We are now at peace with each other.
Adding strong hand rails alongside the engine was a very good move - especially when topping up oil at sea.
The aft cabin is small for a fifty footer, but its small size allows a larger, more useable aft deck. In fact the older less efficient accommodation plan is not crowd compatible, but seems safer to move about at sea.
The program of cutting plenty of access hatches in the hull ceiling planks has paid off a couple of times and I will continue cutting, even to the extent of replacing heavy single hatches with multiple lighter ones.
I thought I’d miss not having a flying bridge, but not yet.
I don’t miss cruising under sail at all.
The first six months have generated even more questions, but I’ll ask those in another thread.
Cheers, John
P.S. Any concepts of ‘brand’, ‘asset’, ‘residual value’ or ‘return on investment’ pushed by purveyors of plastic are a bit of a mystery to me. In my experience boat ownership is a constant cash liability, balanced by regular injections of total enjoyment, so I don’t feel the need to defend timber or argue engine economics too seriously – it just happens that (so far) this boat suits me and my way of staying afloat.
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