How much horsepower do you need?

[Capitaine R]

I'm new at this trawler boating hobby but Put me down for one of those guys that don't see a big problem in having more horsepower than the absolute minimum. We ran our boat at 7/8 knots for 1700 plus miles with the rpms at somewhere around 1100. We did rev it up over 2000 every once in a while. We averaged over 5 mpg with not one mechanical issues on the voyage. Our 32 foot 16000 pound NT has a 300hp Cat 3208t, and it came in handy when we needed to get into an inlet in snotty weather. We figured if we wanted to be underpowered we would buy a sailboat.

But we also have 3 35# CQRs

 

[rgano]

We figured if we wanted to be underpowered we would buy a sailboat.

Best danged quote of the day!!! The avatar shows the only way you will ever see my boat on the water unless in a place where such activity is not appropriate - 80% load.

 

[Nomad Willy]

Sailboat engines are small for a reason.
Don’t need more power.
Why pack around all that extra weight, pay for it and suffer from an unnecessarily heavy boat that is usually less seaworthy?

If you want to go fast buy a boat designed for it. Not a trawler.

 

[rgano]

Perzactly, but I still liked the pithiness of the quote.

 

[hollywood8118]

Wifey B: That's like scary fast on a SeaDoo. Our Jet tenders will run 40 knots and that's fast. I know there are faster Waverunners, but it reminds me of people talking about skiing barefoot because of the speed you have to go. Those who do, tell you the water is very hard when you hit it at 50 mph. I've known a lot of people suffer ear damage and other issues over high speed PWC crashes.

I read this and had to chuckle...
In my crazy youth I did a lot of barefooting, My target speed for general tricks was around 47mph. My all time speed record was 104 behind a blown hydro. The Admiral put her foot down around five years ago and made me stop footing after a snowboarding accident left me with broken vertebra in my neck and back. I think she got tired of all the injuries that BandB mentioned.. torn shoulder, blown ear drum, lots of misc small ones. The water can be unforgiving at speed when a object (body or boat) for that matter tumbles across it. I have fell over 50mph footing and slid to a soft stop.. but most times a foot catches and your head hits in a half of a nano second with painful result. Speed does really come at the cost of power, some boats do it with cat hull, foils, stepped hulls, bubble induction hulls, narrow beam to length.



In our world here (trawlers) it's all about not over driving the hull. Some semi displacement hulls are almost as efficient as full displacement hulls.. look no further than Dashew's boats as a great example. I have a friend that has a really nice Diesel Duck that IMHO is under powered. It has like 80 hp and is just under 50' long. He accepts the 6.5 kt speed he cruises at and burns 1/2 gallon of fuel a year (no not really but it does sip fuel). Personally my life is too busy for those speeds and I like to get there. I run our O.A at 1700 rpm and get 8kts out of the de rated 300 hp (it was a attempt to get the stupid Volvo not to smoke like a WW2 destroyer laying a smoke screen on start up that FAILED miserably) It still manages over 2 mpg so I am happy.


The same folks that under HP a boat are probably the ones that hypermill their old TDI VW so they can get 52 mpg vs 46 if you drive it like a NORMAL person. To me those small high HP low rpm diesels are about as nice to have under the floor as a weed wacker.


HOLLYWOOD

 

[Nomad Willy]

My edit time ran out .. again.

The amount of power should always be what the hull was designed for. But it most often gets bumped up by the marketing people. So the marketing people give the boat what they think people will think they want. People have brainwashed into thinking more power is better. And of course they don’t intend to stop as they are determined to sell more product. “There’s no such thing as too much power”. But of course there’s actually more often too much power.

The hull decides how much power through the NA.

 

[Island Cessna]

My edit time ran out .. again.

The amount of power should always be what the hull was designed for. But it most often gets bumped up by the marketing people. So the marketing people give the boat what they think people will think they want. People have brainwashed into thinking more power is better. And of course they don’t intend to stop as they are determined to sell more product. “There’s no such thing as too much power”. But of course there’s actually more often too much power.

The hull decides how much power through the NA.

My Willard 36 has an 80 hp Perkins 4-236, weighs 32,000 lbs, and based both on fuel consumption, and prop curve on engine performance chart, uses about 21 hp at 6.5 knots.

 

[Art]

My Willard 36 has an 80 hp Perkins 4-236, weighs 32,000 lbs, and based both on fuel consumption, and prop curve on engine performance chart, uses about 21 hp at 6.5 knots.

If you don't mind: How many gph and therefore kpg does that equate to??

 

[Nomad Willy]

Cessna,
80 divided by 16 = 5. 5hp per ton same as our boat.
And I think our boat takes 18hp to go a tad over 6 knots.
The big Perkins 6 cyl is way overpowered in the W36 IMO. Did Willard ever install any 6’s?

But the SD trawlers can use and almost always have more than 5hp per ton. Even the GB36 probably has 6-7hp per ton as a single but the GB42 most likely is underpowered. Most people probably look to “Spray” (kind-of a GB prototype) but Spray was powered as the semi-displacement hull that she is/has.

Anyway it’s a shame many trawlers were hell bent to not using anything but the FL’s limiting hp choice too much.

A nicely ballanced old GB would be (IMO) a 160hp turbo Yanmar or a 190hp turbo Yanmar (Yanmar for lightness) single for the GB42.

Only singling out GB because I’m more familiar w them. I’d buy any single engined GB boat.

 

[mvweebles]

Cessna,
80 divided by 16 = 5. 5hp per ton same as our boat.
And I think our boat takes 18hp to go a tad over 6 knots.
The big Perkins 6 cyl is way overpowered in the W36 IMO. Did Willard ever install any 6’s?

But the SD trawlers can use and almost always have more than 5hp per ton. Even the GB36 probably has 6-7hp per ton as a single but the GB42 most likely is underpowered. Most people probably look to “Spray” (kind-of a GB prototype) but Spray was powered as the semi-displacement hull that she is/has.

Anyway it’s a shame many trawlers were hell bent to not using anything but the FL’s limiting hp choice too much.

A nicely ballanced old GB would be (IMO) a 160hp turbo Yanmar or a 190hp turbo Yanmar (Yanmar for lightness) single for the GB42.

Only singling out GB because I’m more familiar w them. I’d buy any single engined GB boat.

The Willard 36s had an option for the 6.356 130hp and many chose it. Early examples had variations of DDs (Continental comes to mind) in them, and at least one had an international harvestor engine. But the vast majority had Perkins, and the slight majority of those were probably the 6.356 vs the 4.236.

I agree with Island Cessna - the 4.236 is perfectly sized for the W36. I believe trawlers need a little reserve power for headseas, but not much.

As far as fuel economy, I did 500 nms from San Francisco to ensenada in 75 hours, a bit over 6.5 kts. I burned around 80 gallons. I also know of a Willard 36 that went from Southern California to Hawaii in 1987, something like 2400 nms. Over 14 days, they averaged a little over 6 kts and burned 330 gals of diesel. It too had a Perkins 4.236. I do not have a record of how she returned to the US, but she's currently in the PNW.

Finally, I just reread the PMM story of Bill Parletore and Steve D taking a new Willard 30 from Chesapeake Bay to Bermuda around 1999. They did 672 nms and burned 87 gallons of diesel while averaging just over 6 kts.

Willards are cool little boats. American made and proven. It's always surprised me that they aren't more popular than they are.

Peter

 

[Nomad Willy]

Thank you Peter,
It appears the advertising industry has made us hungry for power .. hp in our case. How many times have you heard “Wouldn't you rather have a V8”

The car manufacturers aren’t evil. They are just selling their product.
And having some extra power isn’t evil either.
But having extra power, weight and cost is undesirable and not needed. So it’s better to do w less power, lighter boats and save money to buy things we actually need.

But trawlers, at least 90% of them are SD and can use more power, to cruise, outrun weather (possible but unlikely), buck current but you can only USE so much extra power intelligently or responsibly and it’s an amazingly small amount.

I ran Yaculta rapids in our Albin25 at 9 (or so) knots. Got to Big Bay only to realize we were actually in the rapid. I thought Dent Rapids was Yaculta. We ran the engine at almost certainly over 90% of max power for at least 1/2 an hour. I look back on it as a stupid thing to do. And to others I ask “what’s the difference if one gets to Alaska 4hrs earlier”. Since then we just wait for better conditions. Pleasurable conditions for pleasure boats.

The weight of the 6cyl. engine in a W36 is of little concern in a FD W36 but extra weight in a SD trawler almost always is probably having a negative effect on seaworthyness and general handling. Most all trawlers could benefit from less weight. I know I know weight is mostly what makes them trawlers so weight must be virtuous .... wrong. But there are limits to the benefits of lightness but re most all trawlers they wouldn’t benefit from a 1/4” plywood hull. But I am convinced the majority of 36’ trawlers w two FL’s would benefit from the loss of one engine.

The best way to discover how much power a trawler needs is to compute what power it would need If it were FD. That’s easy. If it’s SD you know you need more power than what’s right for a FD boat. That would be somewhere around 6 to 8hp per ton of cruising weight. Then one gets into the subtle differences in SD hulls.

But one can run a GB42 w one FL and never fell the need for more power. True it should then have a bit different sternshape to take advantage of the low weight and power and have fuel burn rates of a FD hull ..... which it would have if modified and done right.
But that’s for “ideal” and pleasureboating needn’t be ideal. And if you have a bit more power and weight that what would be “perfect” and it makes you feel good .. fine. We spend all this money to feel good .. not to be numerically (or otherwise) correct.

 

[Island Cessna]

If you don't mind: How many gph and therefore kpg does that equate to??

I use about 1 1/4 gal per hour.
Weebles has given much more accurate fuel consumption for the same hull and engine as I have.
The first Willard 36 I had used a 277 cubic inch 4 cylinder Continental Diesel marinized by Gray Marine. It was 60 hp at 2200 rpm, had a balancer, and a heavy flywheel. I believe this was the engine specified by Bill Garden in the original design. It was a sweet, smooth, quiet engine. Solitude still has this engine. Unfortunately it went out of production in about 1962, which I assume triggered the switch to Perkins.

 

[Brooksie]

At hull speed I use 13hp. I have 50 available.
I have the above mentioned Continental H277 mine rated at 50hp@2000

 

[mvweebles]

Finally, I'll add Aloha, the second to last Willard 40 built. She carried 700 gallons and had a JD 4045 turbo in the 130 hp range. I was aboard her from Long Beach to La Paz for a Baja Ha Ha, something close to 1000 nms. She burned under 1.5 gph and averaged a very respectable 7-1/4 kts. We were one of four powerboats in a fleet of 160 that year, average of about 42 feet long. The Ha Ha runs around Halloween, a favorable weather pattern in most years as it was that year. Although majority of boats had very similar theoretical hull speed as our Willard 40, we were one of the first dozen boats to arrive on each 250 nm leg. Many boats arrived well over a day behind us.

I've mentioned several very long open ocean runs in low HP full displacement trawlers. I quietly snicker at people who say they want speed to outrun weather. I really don't know too many people who have more multi-day runs in open water than than I do and it's never been a desire nor an issue - when I hit bad weather I knew it was coming and made a decision to accept it to avoid worse weather or a long delay. Now, I've been aboard boats where it was nice to kick-up onto plane to make a bridge opening which I suspect is much more common than out running weather. And I totally get the currents in PNW are a use case for speed, but outside of that, I measure speed in miles per day, not per hour. Being able to sustain 175 nms per day for days on end is a very fast boat in my estimation. The Dashew FPB at 250 nms is incredible.

How much horsepower do you need? Not much. You may want more, but you really only need a few. Tortoise vs hare. Me? I like life at jogging speed.

Peter

 

[boatpoker]

It's a trawler if the marketing department says it is,

 

[Mako]

I believe trawlers need a little reserve power for headseas, but not much.

That's my feeling too, but in the end the amount of power needed is purely dependent on how the boat is going to be used and the owner's desires.

I ran my 65ft at 8.25 knots on the West Coast. It had twin 6-71N's in her and in my opinion was overpowered. The engines ran at 30%, which is too low for a Jimmy. I never ran at 8.5 knots or 8.0 knots or against an outgoing tide in the Bay of Fundy or whatever. Personally I wished she had a single Jimmy, running along happily at 60-70%. But I also don't like twins either. IMO

 

[sunchaser]

Unless one is doing a new build, we have little choice on the vessel's power choice. There is however a lot of choice on the "throttle" position thus hopefully optimizing fuel efficiency.

That said, this virus year we are burning no fuel, but the real costs of ownership continue unabated.

 

[mvweebles]

Well, speak of the devil. Here's a 1964 Willard 36 Sedan that recently hit yacht world. I don't know this boat. Listing says same family has owned for 47 years so since 1973. Weebles, a 1970 sistership, was moored in Newport Beach too so the original owners undoubtedly knew one another.

Looks like a clean boat that has not been butchered over the years. At $79k, not a bad deal though the layout is dated. FYI - description states 250 gals diesel in fiberglass tanks. She would carry 500 gals in two fiberglass tanks.

https://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1964/willard-marine-vega-3694250/

Peter

 

[Art]

Well, speak of the devil. Here's a 1964 Willard 36 Sedan that recently hit yacht world. I don't know this boat. Listing says same family has owned for 47 years so since 1973. Weebles, a 1970 sistership, was moored in Newport Beach too so the original owners undoubtedly knew one another.

Looks like a clean boat that has not been butchered over the years. At $79k, not a bad deal though the layout is dated. FYI - description states 250 gals diesel in fiberglass tanks. She would carry 500 gals in two fiberglass tanks.

https://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1964/willard-marine-vega-3694250/

Peter

Peter - Willard are nice FD, canoe transom boats! Beam is rather narrow and draft a bit deep. Stateroom sleeping??

In 11th photo there's a 40' Tollycraft sedan to right side [seen in later photos two].

 

[markpierce]

At hull speed I use 13hp. I have 50 available.
I have the above mentioned Continental H277 mine rated at 50hp@2000

Observation: Willards use sailboat-like hulls and thus are very fuel-efficient.

 

[mvweebles]

Peter - Willard are nice FD, canoe transom boats! Beam is rather narrow and draft a bit deep. Stateroom sleeping??

In 11th photo there's a 40' Tollycraft sedan to right side [seen in later photos two].

Willards are classic designs with a 3:1 length to beam ratio. The first production design - the Willard 36, came off the drafting board of Wm Garden, one of the three great West Coast naval architects of the day (Monk and Defever being the others). The first Willard 36 splashed in 1961; the last was 39-hulls later, mine was the last in 1970. To my eyes, she was the first production displacement fiberglass trawler ever - predates the GBs (a great looking boat but a semi-displacement that didn't start fiberglass until 1973) and Nordhavn by over a decade.

Just as older cars are not for everyone, older boats are not either. The 1964 Willard 36 that just hit Yachtworld at $80k has bunks for four, just as older Hinkley sailboats do in the salon. She does not have a stall shower. But she has an amazing aft deck and an elegance that is not repeatable in any modern boat. It clearly is more akin to a classic sailor-cruiser than a later-in-life powerboater seeking the conveniences of a condo. At the tail end of my delivery career, I really had negative reactions to the $200k in electronics folks were installing - and this was 15+ years ago. I felt it was a distraction from developing seamanship skills: so much can be ascertained by simply looking out the window without consulting an LED display. So I moved in the other direction, to a more simple approach. But few do that - most seem to layer on more gadgets which is fine, but not a comfortable fit for me. I'm an analog type of guy.

For me, much as I love really nice boats, I find the condo-equivilent with multiple ice-makers a distraction. When I'm on the water, I crave simplicity - a throw-back to a time long ago. I find that in the Willard, and I appreciate what Bill Garden designed into the hull. I have a strong sense of nostalgia and seamanship. It's the right boat for me.

That said, I'm almost done with a major refit/retrofit. We did not find the pullman style berth workable as we age because one of us gets up a couple times a night to pee (who shall remain nameless). So we converted the head in the forepeak to a vee-berth and moved the head aftward. Labor is around $6k in Mexico, plus materials. And we've done some other modifications. She's still an old boat, but with a few updated conveniences.

A Willard is really about cruising in a time gone by. I have mimeographed newsletters from the 1960's and 1970's from all owners of the time. More or less, the earliest "TrawlerForum." These folks went down Baja fishing long before there was commonly available VHF radios let alone Radars. One fellow - an attorney from Portland OR who purchased Hull #4 went to the Galopogas Islands. All well before watermakers, GPS, etc.

Willards aren't for everyone, but I am surprised there aren't more older, experienced ex-sailors who still seek a more simple approach to cruising than 4x black-box displays and such.

Oh well.

Peter

 

[Mako]

That’s a beautiful old Williard that’s obviously been well cared for by its owners. But in the end, it hasn’t been upgraded since the 70’s and is still a 60 year old boat. Probably sell in the $40k area realistically.

 

[mvweebles]

That’s a beautiful old Williard that’s obviously been well cared for by its owners. But in the end, it hasn’t been upgraded since the 70’s and is still a 60 year old boat. Probably sell in the $40k area realistically.

I seem to recall you're in the marine business. Wondering if "hasn't been upgraded" is actually a benefit. So many boats have been butchered by owners with hatchet wiring jobs, many weren't done that well in the first place. A half dozen well intentioned but novice owners can do a ton of damage. One of the things that struck me about this boat is it's never had stuff installed. Not crazy about a Chrysler diesel, but you get the idea.

Thoughts?

 

[Mako]

Really good point! I hate seeing that rats nest of wiring in pretty much every used boat I’ve looked at.

So this boat is not a “project” boat and it’s ready for a nice makeover. Would be great for someone on the left coast.

However I’m not familiar with the Chrysler diesel. What in the world was Lee Iococca up to???

 

[Ski in NC]

I think the Chrysler diesel is either a Mitsubishi or Nissan. Or maybe Mazda. Chrysler for sure did not build it.

 

[Nomad Willy]

I think Nissan.

 

[Art]

Late 1950's... I recall when dad brought aboard our SD hull coastal cruiser a portable RDF. It became a good addition to our navigation needs that were accomplished via known speed at specific rpm, timer watch, paper charts and a compass. We always hit our mark. He was a great navigator. I learned a lot!!

Having joined the RCAF... my father was photo reconnaissance pilot flying an unarmed British Spitfire plane; well before U.S. was forced to get into WWII. Thereafter, from mid war onward, he flew for U.S. Navy shuttling the wounded.

I'm not into fancy equipment either! Need I say more...

 

[Island Cessna]

I think Nissan.

Yes, Nissan. Chrysler marketed them quite diligently in the early ‘70’s as a drop in replacement for the thousands of Chrysler Crown flat head gas engines that were still in service.

 

[sunchaser]

A tonne is 2204.6 lbs. You're a cask or two short for your metric ton!

Spoken like an exploration geologist. Then there are Troy ounces!