Conalls boat Key West

So you actually went out in a small craft warning?

Hi barnacles,

We did go out during a small craft warning.

I don't think small craft applies to our boat as she weighs almost 70,000 lbs. I do pay attention to the warning in that the Coast Gaurd recommends that operators should excersise caution, which we did.

Always being cautious and not wanting to put my kids or anyone else in danger, I for sure would have headed back in if I felt threatened. There's still initial doubt in my mind, but each time we go out in less than perfect conditions, we learn more about what we can handle and what the boat can handle and respond to. I do trust my equipment.

In the same thought, I'm getting a few longer passages under my belt, and have had to deal with a little weather. At first the rolling freaked me out, but as I got use to the boat it's not so intimidating. On some severe rolls, I would have estimated us rolling 20 or 30 degrees. Wanting to know what was actually happening, I installed a digital clinometer on my phone to measure the roll. The worst roll we ever saw, when stuff was really moving around, was 12 degrees. I don't know if 12 degrees is severe or not, but I fairly confident it feels worse than it actually is. I also shoot videos to show friends how nasty things can get, but when I look at the videos a day later, they never look as animated as things felt on board, so I just delete them as nothing I've filmed seems worth showing.

Cheers

Conall

Conall

Excellent read, thanks for posting

If you only saw 12, you're about half way to "lively", and about a third of the way to "Wow! What the heck am I doing out here".

Which is about a quarter of the way to "OMG! This is really not good!!"

Sounds like a great trip and you got to test the crew and equipment in safe conditions.

Greetings,
Mr. C. I think a "small craft" is considered as anything under 60'.

Conall63 said:

...

In the same thought, I'm getting a few longer passages under my belt, and have had to deal with a little weather. At first the rolling freaked me out, but as I got use to the boat it's not so intimidating. On some severe rolls, I would have estimated us rolling 20 or 30 degrees. Wanting to know what was actually happening, I installed a digital clinometer on my phone to measure the roll. The worst roll we ever saw, when stuff was really moving around, was 12 degrees. I don't know if 12 degrees is severe or not, but I fairly confident it feels worse than it actually is. I also shoot videos to show friends how nasty things can get, but when I look at the videos a day later, they never look as animated as things felt on board, so I just delete them as nothing I've filmed seems worth showing.
...

Click to expand...

The MV Dirona blog has a few posts showing their instruments and describes the weather conditions.

http://mvdirona.com/Trips/atlanticocean2016/atlanticocean3.html?bleat=1/24/2016:+Conditions

The boats pitch and roll is shown middle of the instrument panel.

...the wind picked up to NE 20-30 earler today and the waves tightened to about 7-8ft on 7-8 seconds. Max roll and pitch over the past hour was 12.7° and 11.2° respectively. (The screenshot shows this data graphically for the past 24 hours in the third row). We've learned from experience that Jennifer will get seasick if we pitch steadliy over 10°, so she's wearing a scopolamine patch now. As the waves picked up, our speed fell and we were doing less than 5 knots to meet the fuel economy goal.

Click to expand...

They have other posts about conditions where they document their roll and pitch rate. One, was pretty bad going over a bar and getting caught by high waves.

Later,
Dan

So you heard about the El Faro right? She was a big ship too

Just saying. Glad you made it and puhleeze dont go out in advisories again. Your boat aint no match for big water.

Greetings RT,

When I first started to pay attention to small craft advisories, I had to find out what the definition was, and how it applied to us.

The size of the vessel is not talked of in the definition, rather NOAA speaks of any vessel that is going to be adversely effected by the warning. NOAA qualifies their warning, in my opinion, by recommending all operators are to use caution.

I don't think there's a set rule for action on how we deal with a warning other than use caution and be aware there's a warning. Its up to the operator to make the decision as to how safe things are. The operator of a pontoon boat treats a warning different than an operator of a 45' ocean going trawler as does the operator of a 160' freighter.

I guess what I'm getting at is I don't feel there's a "stay or go" rule to follow once we here the small craft advisory.

Conall

While not the greatest expense of running a boat, I watch our fuel closely so here are a few particulars of our trip.

We have four fuel tanks on board. Three tanks are used for storage, and one tank feeds the machinery. There are two 400 gallon storage tanks, one 150 gallon storage tank, and a 150 gallon operating tank.

Fuel use is tracked with a ruler, a chart of burn for RPM, and a flow meter. Every morning I look at the engine hour meter and generator hour meter so I can begin to guess how much fuel to transfer. I also keep a log while the boat is running and make notes on a fairly regular basis of what RPM we are turning and speed.

Now that I know how many hours the engine ran for, I look at my RPM chart for fuel burn and take a guess at consumption.

I don't know the exact generator burn but have been using 1/2 gallon per hour.

Now, with a pretty good idea of how much I'm going to transfer, I go to the ER, and measure the liquid level of the operating tank with a ruler and record in my fuel log. I then decide which tank I'm going to transfer from, move the appropriate valve, zero out my flow meter, transfer "X" amount of gallons to the operating tank, then measure the liquid level again. For my operating tank, a measurement of 26" gives me 90 gallons and that's my benchmark for the tank.

This is a low tech, simple way for me to track fuel and has proven to be very accurate. When transferring from storage tanks to the operating tank, fuel passes through a large Racor filter/separator. From the operating tank to the engine or generator, the fuel goes through another Racor filter/separator before passing through the generator or engine filters. I feel 100% confident of the quality of the fuel.

Over the course of a few months some of my numbers start to get a little jumbled. I might not transfer enough fuel to get exactly to the bench mark, or possibly transfer over the bench mark a bit. Also, my ruler is black on one side to make reading it easier, but you never really get dead nut reading, so there's always a bit of error and guessing. So after few months or so, I'll take some time to total the fuel on the boat. Totaling the fuel on board is done by pumping one tank empty into tank "X", and record the flow meter total, then pump that same amount of fuel form tank "X" back into the just emptied tank. I repeat that for all four tanks to get the exact amount of fuel on board.

Some of the numbers from the Key West Trip are:

359 Miles
174 gallons of fuel
Engine hours 57.7
Generator hours 81.4
Moving average 6.5 kt
Max speed 11.4 kt
Generator fuel used 40.7
Engine fuel used 133.3
Engine fuel efficiency 2.69 NM/Gallon
Boat fuel efficiency ( includes generator) 2.06 NM/Gallon

The boat was mostly ran at 1600 RPM with favoring 1700 quite a bit. I'd prefer to run at 1500, but I was having to maintain speed to get to where we wanted by dark, so I ran a fuzz harder than I'd prefer. I think if I'd stuck with 1500 I could have hit 3 NM/Gallon on engine efficiency.

A@B Marina charged us $132 per night for a five night total of $660. I think our electric bill with A@B was $25.00. We did one pump out at A@B, so with tax and the pump out, our total was about $725.00.

We had enough fuel on board to do this trip, but with my pre-trip guesstimate of burning 200 gallons, we added that amount of fuel prior to leaving Ft. Myers. The fuel cost for this trip @ $2.00 per gallon was about $350.00

I don't pay much attention to food on board as a cost because we have to eat no matter where we are. As all of our other trips, we loaded way more food on board than we needed, and ended up bringing much of it back home.

The trip was ten days, and for whole duration of the trip there were five of us on board. Once in Key West, we had eight on board. We have two heads, two showers, and three sinks. The cabins, all below deck, consists of the master cabin with a walk around queen, and the forward cabin with four permanent bunks. Above, salon table folds down for a blow up queen, we also have a reclining love seat that some of the kids favor to sleep in. The wheel house table can fold down for a blow up full size mattress, but I don't let anyone sleep up there as that's my space. With six kids, we have large family, so we have to make due how we can. Oh yeah, we also have a lap dog that comes with my wife!!

This spring break trip was a big success for us. The reason I have this, among many reasons, is for trips like these as they're affordable, unique, fun, and challenging. This lifestyle defines me on a certain level, and I'm glad the rest of my family enjoys it and embraces it. I missed not having my two college age kids with us as they're up north going to school, but we're planning a summer trip with them to the Dry Tortugas via Key West.

Cheers,

Conall

Conall,

Another great read while taking lunch. Your fuel numbers look pretty darn good for a boat that size. And a fairly reasonable vacation minus the time and expensive of the build.

Well Worth It,

Jim