We chartered a single engine GB36 before buying our own, much older GB36. The charter boat had a bow thruster, and we were far more inexperienced at this kind of boating then than we are now. But despite the inexperience we did everything we wanted to do with that single/bow thruster combination. In fact we managed to hold ourselves off a lee concrete float in a strong wind with the right (fortunately, it could have gone the other way) combination and coordination of prop thrust, rudder, and thruster. The experiences with that boat plus all the single engine canal boats we've run in the UK has convinced me beyond a shaddow of a doubt that anything you can accomplish maneuvering-wise in a twin you can accomplish in a single.
Redundancy. Well, it's pretty hard for me to make a big case about how having a second engine in a boat is the only way to ensure safety when I fly airplanes with only one engine (and never had one completely fail on me). When we went shopping for a GB of our own we didn't care if what we came up with was a single or a twin. It happened to be a twin. And I found I like running multiple engines and my wife feels more confident with multiple engines so there it is.
But all of the boats I consider my "favorite" boats are single engine boats. Lobster boats, classic PNW salmon trollers, the now-extinct aku boats--- all singles. I'd love to have any one of them if I had the time and money to keep them up properly. And I suspect that if I had one with an engine in good shape and I had the time and knowledge to keep it that way I would never suffer an engine failure. (None of the four engine shutdowns we have experienced in our GB had anything to do with the actual engines).
So our reasons for prefering a twin in the kind of cruiser we have are all about our individual preferences, some if not all of which are not at all logical if one takes a purely objective view of it.
Redundancy. Well, it's pretty hard for me to make a big case about how having a second engine in a boat is the only way to ensure safety when I fly airplanes with only one engine (and never had one completely fail on me). When we went shopping for a GB of our own we didn't care if what we came up with was a single or a twin. It happened to be a twin. And I found I like running multiple engines and my wife feels more confident with multiple engines so there it is.
But all of the boats I consider my "favorite" boats are single engine boats. Lobster boats, classic PNW salmon trollers, the now-extinct aku boats--- all singles. I'd love to have any one of them if I had the time and money to keep them up properly. And I suspect that if I had one with an engine in good shape and I had the time and knowledge to keep it that way I would never suffer an engine failure. (None of the four engine shutdowns we have experienced in our GB had anything to do with the actual engines).
So our reasons for prefering a twin in the kind of cruiser we have are all about our individual preferences, some if not all of which are not at all logical if one takes a purely objective view of it.