Fuel
Saving Tip for your Day-Cruiser:
Buy a Bigger
Boat!
After having a day cruiser for a few
years, we bit the bullet and moved up to a bigger boat.
In our case, we found a nice 37' flybridge convertible
that was built in the mid nineties and came with a
five-figure price tag. If you have considered such
a move, the time has never been better to find a bargain
on a big boat. Interest rates are still good, and the
credit crunch during early '08 has left the market
with a great selection of boats to from which to choose.
Moving up will, of course, increase some of your expenses.
These include fixed expenses such as insurance, maintenance
and property taxes. The surprise for us, however, has
been the decreased fuel bill for 2008. This is hard
to believe, considering we've been boating more, and
fuel prices have increased almost a dollar per gallon
at the pump.
Most of this relates to how you use
a boat. When we had a day-cruiser, in our case, a Sea
Ray 280, we found ourselves cruising at 25 mph, finding
a spot to swim and eat, then we'd get hot, so we'd
cruise some more. We frequently brought guests and
zipped downtown for dinner, which was also fun. With
a larger boat and more room to hang out, we found that
the boat itself became the destination.
Sure it's fun to go to Buckheads for
dinner, but with a larger platform, you can find you
own spot on the river, and comfortably serve your own
food and beverages. In our case, we found that 1400-1600
RPM yielded a nice slow cruise, and with 37' of boat
and twin 454s, we were getting 1.5 mpg. That's roughly
what we averaged overall with the 280 and its twin
350 blocks, but the difference was the amount of time
spent running and the speed at which we'd do so. Instead
of keeping everybody cool at 25 mph, we were happy
opening the sliding glass door and retiring to the
salon for a little cool air. Whereas our day-cruiser
was a little crowded with guests, the larger platform
offered more room for everybody. We found that we'd
usually have a few adults swimming out back, with the
rest hanging out in the shade on the back or lounging
inside. When it was time to eat, instead of tripping
over a cooler, there was ample room in the galley to
prepare a nice meal. The full-sized shower was nice
after swimming all day, and the kids could watch a
DVD in the salon while the adults hung out on the back
deck for the evening. As for the fuel use, I started
to wonder after two months if the gauge was even working.
As it turned out, the 375 tank, which
we kept about 1/2 full, just wasn't getting depleted
much. We found that instead of moving all day like
we did in the Weekender, we would make a 3 mile trip
to 12 Mile Island, hang out all day or weekend, then
make a 3 mile trip home. The time on the boat was much
more comfortable, and when it was all said and done,
we'd use less than 10 gallons of roundtrip fuel. Even
if you figure roughly 1.0 gph burn for the genset,
which we lightly used, we were still using less fuel
for a "day on the river" than we did in an
hour at cruise of the smaller boat.
At this point, maybe you're saying
to yourself, "but I want to go fast sometimes." That's
great. A larger boat makes for a great mothership and
a great platform to spend time on the water. You can
invite your friends over and trade some skiing time
on the runabout for some relaxing time and dinner on
the mothership. Friends with PWC are also welcome.
A Zodiac inflatable would be great, too, down the road.
Above, tied up at River's
Edge Marina. Photo by Capt. Eric
To be fair, I'll be the first to admit
that running the 280 and 37'er side by side will show
double the fuel burn on the 37. But, that's only half
the story. What we didn't account for was the different
way we would use a bigger boat. Sure, we still take
it downtown for big events, and yes, we burn twice
the fuel on those days. But for the other days on the
river, our fuel budget has actually gone way down.
If you're thinking about moving up to a larger boat,
don't let fuel be the show-stopper.
-Capt. Eric
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