bfloyd4445
Guru
anybody out there ever use their comehome motor? Some passagemakers and downeaster's had the factory option for a comehome motor.
Your gen set powers a hydraulic pump that can power a get.home by couimg the motor and shaft with a chain. We have tried it a coue of times, repla e the chain and hydraic hoses. The gen set hydraulic also powers the bow thuster. We have not had to use, but I make sure it will work if needed.
It seems to me that 10 HP is going to take a pretty serious noisemaker to start it. In a perfect world with no losses that's roughly a 7.5 KW genset but it seems to me that starting loads would be way higher and obviously there would be efficiency losses along the way. I'd be curious to see if anyone has such a system running and if so what it really requires to operate. I'm not concerned about a get home system on Gray Hawk - as Marin points out ad nauseum, that's what the 2nd Lehman is for. What I would like to do is come up with a trolling solution - imagine that - a trolling system for a trawler - but I digress. We can't get under 4 kts even with one engine shut down. I'm not prepared to spend much on a rig but if I could run an electric motor to drive one shaft I might consider it.
Hummm,
"Outboards boats gain a great deal of efficiency just by moving the engine a few inches away from the transom. If they didn't the offshore bracket would not be so popular"
Could be, could be, yet I rather believe that the addition of a offshore bracket as you describe, is really a method of placing the outboard on a normally high stern to allow the engine to be at the proper position in relation to the engineered depth between the mounting and the bracket. This allows the stern of the boat to remain in a high profile. If you didn't use an extension, the stern has to be cut down to affect the mounting of the engine. Thus you open the boat to being "Pooped" in certain sea conditions or overloading allowing sea water to enter the boat. Yes, normally there is a firewall between the engine mount and the interior of the boat, however there are accesses for the use of controls and or fuel lines which are subject to that sea water should it be active enough.
Not intending to take a point away, only to clarify the main reason of using an extension. To, the application is most prevalent on boats where the inboard/outboard unit has been replaced along with the elimination and removal of the inboard/outboard power plant.
Others add fuel or ballast space in the extensions, others use the extension as floatation. Lots of different applications.
Actually it is a bit of both And to confuse things more....High performance boats use the bracket to get the motor high enough to effect a surface pierceing prop, where 1/2 the prop is out of the water while on plane