Passagemakers under 46'

You don't need a big expensive boat and sumptuous interiors to cross oceans as proven by the many solo sea kayaking ocean crossings done to date.

Do you know of any diesel powered boats under 46' designed to be passagemakers?

Here's a start to the list that I scratched up this morning;

Tad Roberts Passagemaker Lite 39 - Tad Roberts' fast, seaworthy, fuel-efficient long-range passagemaker

LOA: 39' 5"
LWL: 38' 4"
Beam: 11' 0"
Draft: 3' 0"

1,100 gallons fuel, twin 75hp engines

Michael Kasten 30' Buster - Kasten Marine Design

29' 9" LOA
10 '6" Beam
4' 6" Loaded Draft.

4,000 nm at 5.5 knots
3,000 nm at 6 knots
2,400 nm at 6.5 knots
600 gallons fuel, 55hp engine

Michael Kasten 36' Greatheart - Kasten Marine Design

DWL: 29' - 5"
Beam: 10' - 3"
Draft: 4' - 3"
Loaded Displacement: 22,000 lb.

...the intent of the Greatheart 36 design shown here has been to create an aluminum trawler yacht as simply as possible for economy, and as rugged and seaworthy as possible for long range ocean passages.

Michael Kasten 43' Roberta - Kasten Marine Design

43' - 0" Length on Deck
12' - 6" Moulded Beam
5' - 1" Draft - Half Load

Roberta should achieve around 3,000 NM at 7 knots on a fuel capacity of 800 USG with 12% held out as reserve.

800 gallons, 85hp engine

Branson Boat Design Passagemaker 40/44 Trawler yacht | Branson Boat Design Dutch Barges

Kasten Marine has some of the coolest designs IMO. I love their motorsailers.

Seems to me that a 40 Willard, especially the pilothouse model would be a great passagemaker.

Richard could testimony that a Kadey Krogen 42 is a passage maker.

For a passage maker in the mentioned size bracket I'd most definitely go for a sailboat, but that wasn't the question... forced to choose a motor boat, I'd go for something like this or this with suitable modifications.

As for actually contributing to the thread, many of Bruce Roberts' designs are supposed to be intended as passage makers, although they appear breakable to my eye and have gathered a reputation for mediocre performance.

Bob Warman, designer/builder of the Camano Trolls also designed/built a 36 ft vessel which was intended for the trip to Hawaii. There were only a few built so no real stock of them and it was specialized enough that there was not a lot of demand I guess. My wife and I took a look but a custom like that was way out of our price range.

So a passagemaker it would be.

It was written up in the early 90's. I did see one which was for sale many years ago.
I did a bit of searching but can find nothing about it.

And no, it was not the 41 which has now become the Bracewell 41.

C lectric.
Was it an aft pilot house with a low and long trunk cabin forward? I saw a boat years ago from the same builders as the Camano. Aluminum and VERY nice. An older gentleman was living on it and had named her Uijeongbu (we Jong boo) after the Korean city. He invited my wife and I aboard, i was impressed. I have frequently thought of her over the years. Never saw another like her.

Ocean crossers

The big thing when crossing an ocean is a hull design that can take what ever weather & seas that you get.
When your doing a 2 week or 3 week ocean crossing the weather changes & is usually different than forecast.
So you need a full displacement hull with Ballast down in the keel not unlike a sailboat.
This gives you the low center of gravity you need to take what ever the sea dished out to you.
Next you need strength, reliability, capacity to carry 3 weeks of food & water & of course fuel range.
Nordhavn, Kadey-Krogen & Selene come to mind as does Willard & several others.
Having the equipment on board set up for reliability is very important when you 2 K + miles from home.
Good luck with your search.
Alfa Mike

alfamike said:

The big thing when crossing an ocean is a hull design that can take what ever weather & seas that you get.
When your doing a 2 week or 3 week ocean crossing the weather changes & is usually different than forecast.
So you need a full displacement hull with Ballast down in the keel not unlike a sailboat.
This gives you the low center of gravity you need to take what ever the sea dished out to you.
Next you need strength, reliability, capacity to carry 3 weeks of food & water & of course fuel range.
Nordhavn, Kadey-Krogen & Selene come to mind as does Willard & several others.
Having the equipment on board set up for reliability is very important when you 2 K + miles from home.
Good luck with your search.
Alfa Mike

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You should read Tad Roberts rational for his Passagemaker Lite series. There's logic behind his go long, go thin, go lite, and go shallow draft when the trade off is much faster passages. Small and plump boats would have to go pretty slow to conserve fuel and would either have stabilizers or paravanes for comfort, just like Tad recommends for his Lite boats. Just a thought...

I'll Add to AlfaMike's list, livability for a few months, not just three weeks and the ability to fix things in the engine room.

Much of the Tad Robert's designs strike me as boats for a person who wants to transition from sail to motor would like. They then buy the plans and before it ever gets built, they realize why build a motor boat with all the disadvantages of a sailboat?

Did you read Robert's own comments on the roll period for his 39?
You would dive overboard half way across figuring you would be better off swimming.

In addition to those already mentioned, the Nordhavn 40. That and the Krogen 42 are two of my favorite small passagemakers.

As alfamike notes above, a blue water passage requires that you and your boat be able to take anything that mother nature throws at you long after the last weather forecast you got before leaving is meaningless.

As he notes there are several criterion to meet for a boat to be considered a blue water passagemaker:

Scantlings- basically built in hull, superstructure and window strength.
Stability- hull shape, ballast and well designed engine vents
Robust systems- engine fuel system, electrics, navigation electronics
Engine reliablility, spare parts and skipper smarts to be able to fix stuff at sea.

These things don't come cheap. You will spend 2-3 times more for a real blue water passagemaker as an equivalent aged coastal trawler. And the skipper is a big part of the equation.

David

You may want to consider going up 2 more feet and consider the Hatteras 48 LRC. Has range, full displacement hull, and comfort.

IntervaleII said:

You may want to consider going up 2 more feet and consider the Hatteras 48 LRC. Has range, full displacement hull, and comfort.

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Thanks for the tip.

I'm not looking for a smaller passagemaker at this time...just started this thread as an alternative to the other passagemaker threads where things unerringly drift towards larger, more expensive boats.

There may be a time in the future where we'll consider such a boat, because as sea kayakers we used to go on 2 month long trips without going near cities or stores. Would be great to have the fuel capacity so we could stay "out there" for 2 months or more, where we could anchor in select locations for a couple weeks at a time.

Greg S said:

C lectric.
Was it an aft pilot house with a low and long trunk cabin forward? I saw a boat years ago from the same builders as the Camano. Aluminum and VERY nice. An older gentleman was living on it and had named her Uijeongbu (we Jong boo) after the Korean city. He invited my wife and I aboard, i was impressed. I have frequently thought of her over the years. Never saw another like her.

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Yes, that description sounds like the boat I remember. I still wonder where she went.

MurrayM said:

(...)
Would be great to have the fuel capacity so we could stay "out there" for 2 months or more, where we could anchor in select locations for a couple weeks at a time.

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Two months isn't difficult at all. I get about a year out of my 1.500 liters, so with a water maker on board, most modern motor yachts (even fast ones) should be able to loiter for months.

Henning said:

Two months isn't difficult at all. I get about a year out of my 1.500 liters, so with a water maker on board, most modern motor yachts (even fast ones) should be able to loiter for months.

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That's about 400 US gallons...our boat came with two 50 gallon tanks and had another 40 gallon tank added by a previous owner, so we have about 450 liters of usable fuel. The previous owner also installed a larger engine, so consumption went up.

I'm making the crossing in 2 weeks or so. (weather window). I'll let you know if it is a good passagemaker.

C lectric said:

Yes, that description sounds like the boat I remember. I still wonder where she went.

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There is one located at a marina in Anacortes, WA. The present owner, a retired tug engineer and former Willard owner, has done a major refit since acquiring it several years ago. I've been aboard and really liked the layout -- stateroom, head and galley down and forward, followed aft by a spacious "wheelhouse" (helm and saloon area). The cockpit was adequate and enclosed with doors leading to narrow side decks. Overall appearance is long and narrow -- nice!

I have read a ton of references to window strength over the years. I don't have too much offshore experience, although I have sailed from Seattle to Hawaii and back, and been through some horrific bar crossings while fishing on Washingtons coast. I have never seen anything that would come close to knocking out good quality aluminum framed, tempered glass windows. How big a risk is this really? I am asking for places you would go pleasure cruising, not deadliest catch in Alaska in the middle of winter. I defiantly get it with rubber framed cheapo windows, or 40 year old wooden Taiwanese windows that may not have had tempered glass, and may not have been maintained properly over the years.

@MurrayM: Well, then if you have the same fuel burn as me, you should be good for almost four months.

For reference: My four-ish liter per day figure was achieved with two people living on board, cooking with genset electricity, burning diesel to keep the boat warm, and moving her every two weeks or so. Laundry was handled ashore.

A water maker would change things drastically, though.

Snapdragon III said:

(...) How big a risk is this really? I am asking for places you would go pleasure cruising, not deadliest catch in Alaska in the middle of winter.

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Like that time we went from Iceland to Greenland kinda late in the year, and the winter weather pattern arrived kinda early? That was for pleasure, or some approximation of it.

Or that time we got caught out by a winter gale off the Algerian coast? That was another pleasure cruise, and it caused some damage to a very solid ship. Given how the sea smashed deck lockers to pieces, broke 5/8" lashings and bent steel fixtures, I wouldn't want it knocking on my window, at least not a large one.

Another example that springs to mind is heading out of the Bay of Biscay, which is definitely an area frequented by coastal cruisers, never mind people aiming to cross the pond. A sailboat disappeared without a trace once when we headed out that way, and I spent all night listening to SAR on the VHF, privately wondering what had sunk them, thinking they probably lost a deck hatch or somesuch. Not forgetting that one.

So to answer your question directly: Pretty big, in my experience.

Henning said:

@MurrayM: Well, then if you have the same fuel burn as me, you should be good for almost four months.

For reference: My four-ish liter per day figure was achieved with two people living on board, cooking with genset electricity, burning diesel to keep the boat warm, and moving her every two weeks or so. Laundry was handled ashore.

A water maker would change things drastically, though.

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Our circumstances are a little different than yours. We could go 4 months using your numbers if we sat in one spot without leaving the marina, but that's not the way we boat.

There are basically 3 fuel stops on BC's north coast; Hartley Bay, Kitimat, and Prince Rupert, which are an average of 75 nautical miles apart. Just to go to the Kitlope River (at the end of Gardner Canal) and back home takes about 30 gallons of fuel. Then there's all those other channels and inlets to explore...

We don't need a watermaker just yet because we're young and nimble enough to fill up at a gazillion streams, creeks, or rivers coming from the mountains.

MurrayM said:

There are basically 3 fuel stops on BC's north coast; Hartley Bay, Kitimat, and Prince Rupert, which are an average of 75 nautical miles.

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Don't forget Shearwater, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Klemtu and QC City. Of course Central vs North Coast can intrude on my PS.

sunchaser said:

Don't forget Shearwater, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Klemtu and QC City. Of course Central vs North Coast can intrude on my PS.

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Well...Bella Bella and Shearwater are on the 'central coast' and it could be argued that Klemtu is as well.

Still, there are few options and many loooong Channels sneaking off into the Coast Mountains that are completely uninhabited.

Snapdragon III said:

I have read a ton of references to window strength over the years. I don't have too much offshore experience, although I have sailed from Seattle to Hawaii and back, and been through some horrific bar crossings while fishing on Washingtons coast. I have never seen anything that would come close to knocking out good quality aluminum framed, tempered glass windows. How big a risk is this really? I am asking for places you would go pleasure cruising, not deadliest catch in Alaska in the middle of winter. I defiantly get it with rubber framed cheapo windows, or 40 year old wooden Taiwanese windows that may not have had tempered glass, and may not have been maintained properly over the years.

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I've always been a bit concerned about knocking out my windows in rough water. They are tempered glass, in aluminum frames and the pilothouse is solid fibreglass.
Last month when returning for Pot Lincoln, we encountered big wind waves in 30 knot winds plus a big swell. One wave caught me off guard and green water broke over the boat almost on the beam.
The windows didn't pop out but they certainly were not waterproof. Water squirted through every crack between the sliders and blew out the cheap weatherproofing. (It also dumped about a pile of water in the cockpit, some of which flowed into the pilothouse.

Even if the window doesn't break, water intrusion may will cause electrical component issues eventually.

I don't think slider windows (or slider cockpit doors) of any type would be suitable on a passagemaker.

Yikes!

If your taking green water on board, and worried about your ports, one should also be concerned with how the house is connected. I would be wary of some of the older boats with plywood cabins and houses. They may be more or less tabbed on.

Water is heavy.

AusCan,
Get some pices of tempered glass and throw them into a steel bin typically used for garbage. I did that kinda by accident w a newly installed empty bin. I just threw some pieces from my trailer down into the bin and was alarmed that there was no typical breaking glass sounds. I looked and sure enough the glass pices were fully intact .. not broken.
After doing that I had a new respect for the strength of tempered glass. It's much stronger than safety glass but of course when it does break it becomes hundreds of knives. Boats vary widely as to glass vulnerability so the needed strength varies too.

Northern Spy said:

If your taking green water on board, and worried about your ports, one should also be concerned with how the house is connected. I would be wary of some of the older boats with plywood cabins and houses. They may be more or less tabbed on.

Water is heavy.

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Yes NS,
From what I hear many tugboats have sunk from water ingested through the hole where the forecabin was before a wave swept it off the deck.
My dad pounded the windows out of a Saber Craft in a SE gale in Chatham Strait Alaska. A 26' light plywood cruiser. This boat was built before much FG was used in boat construction. Wood boats were held together w fasteners and glue. All the windows failed from the shock of the light boat pounding into headseas.