Tiller Steering and Outboard Motors

[romanos2b]

Originally Posted by smj

You must have owned a cat that wasn't known for its sailing ability to only be able to achieve 55 degrees.
We owned a Cherokee 35 with a 38hp diesel and hydraulic drives. Made maybe 5 kts burning at least 1 gallon per hour. Changed out to a Honda 50 and started motoring at 7 kts burning 7/8 gallon per hour. Gemini 3200 with a Honda 40 at 7 kts about 7/8 gallon per hour. And two Seawind 1000,s with stern extensions with twin Yamaha 9.9's getting about 7 kts and burning a hair over 1 gallon per hour. Also an Edel 43 and a Solaris 36 Sunstar both with twin Yanmar 3gm30's doing about 7 kts burning 1 gallon per hour.
Can't understand why gasoline is only ok for coastal cruising. Let's face it, if your offshore you have nothing to run into so the engine isn't as important as coastal. Where coastal sailing the engine plays a much bigger role. So if it's ok for coastal must be ok for offshore, right?

Show me a track of a cruising cat doing better than 50° degrees, with 4 tacks on offshore condition.
For the reasons why a gasoline outboard engine is a non-sense in ocean passage or offshore cruising, I said it already.

[smj]

Originally Posted by romanos2b

Show me a track of a cruising cat doing better than 50° degrees, with 4 tacks on offshore condition.
For the reasons why a gasoline outboard engine is a non-sense in ocean passage or offshore cruising, I said it already.

Whoa, we're back tracking from 55 degrees to 50. If we keep discussing this maybe I could get you down to 35 degrees :-). I don't agree with you but I'm sure you'll enjoy sailing your mono with a diesel as much as I enjoy sailing a multi with an outboard.

[nimblemotors]

4x as much fuel for a gas outboard?
For cars, diesel engines can get about ~15% better fuel mileage.
In the US, diesel fuel costs about ~10% more than gasoline.

Higher HP outboards are generally not designed to operate a boat at 5 knots,
the gearing and props are setup for higher planning speed.
So using one needs to be setup properly for the application.

[elhix]

I've got a Shuttleworth cat that -
a) sails upwind all well as (usually much better than) most other mono and multi-hulled yachts we've met in the last couple of years. Downwind - also not too shabby.
b) has tiller and crossbar steering, I like the direct feel you get with tillers plus the 'system' is very, very simple - easy to make bomb proof in fact.
c) has a single high-thrust 9.9hp outboard mounted centrally in a 'box'. The outboard works well, is economical and thanks to our effective rudders manoeuvrability is surprisingly good - we've negotiated many tight spaces and haven't crashed into anything yet.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by romanos2b

Show me a track of a cruising cat doing better than 50° degrees, with 4 tacks on offshore condition.
For the reasons why a gasoline outboard engine is a non-sense in ocean passage or offshore cruising, I said it already.

You must be talking about a 30yr old 2stroke if you think it burns 4 times the fuel.

We have a 25hp on our 34' cat and at normal cruising speed, we get 6mpg. If we back off to 5kts, it jumps up to 10mpg.

Yes, you can have issues with gas going bad if it sits too long. Of course, I hear lots of stories of diesels going down because the old fuel grows crud, so neither likes fuel that sits forever.

As far as saving space due to big fuel tanks, that is typically offset by a much lighter drivetrain with an outboard. And the fuel economy is typically offset by a much higher initial price for diesel.

The fuel safety is greatly improved on a catamaran as you can bottom vent the tanks like on a car (most people aren't paranoid about driving gasoline bombs on a freeway at 70mph).

I would agree for a monohull, tiller steering is simple with little to fail. As far as catamarans, yes, it does suck up valuable space. As cruisers, we keep lots of stuff on at the stern and it would conflict with tiller steering.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by romanos2b

I owned cats and monohull, most catamarans can't sail closer than 55° of the wind, If I'm back on a monohull is because I don't like motoring too much, plus a cat is not confortable if the wind doesn't come from the back unless you stay in the bay^^. I've a 50 hp diesel engine burning less than a gallon an hour, I owed a 50 hp outboard evinrude was burning 2-3 gallons an hour.
Sorry if I still say that for the same HP a diesel engine will burn a lot less fuel and still will have a better torque than a gasoline engine.
Gasoline engine is ok only for coastal cruising...

To windward we sail at 30' apparent. Not many of the CRUISING monohull skippers I've talked to say they can go anywhere near that high.

Because of our speed through the water, ie sailing to windward we sail at around 75% of TWS, which drags our apparent wind further forward, we still tack through about 100'.

Our 20hp outboards use about 25-30% more fuel than similar sized diesels, when running. On one motor at 5.5-6 knots we use around 2 litres per hour. But we run them less - being able to raise them out of the water means we can keep sailing in lighter winds than a diesel equipped boat can.

Overall, when we've cruised in the company of diesel equipped boats, we've used significantly LESS fuel than they have.

Plenty of outboard powered sailboats have circumnavigated.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by romanos2b

Show me a track of a cruising cat doing better than 50° degrees, with 4 tacks on offshore condition.
For the reasons why a gasoline outboard engine is a non-sense in ocean passage or offshore cruising, I said it already.

Kind of a nonsense request - why would you be short-tacking offshore?

We sailed from Erromango to Tanna upwind in 25-30 knots. Our tacking angles were actually better than usual, because the high wind strength brought our apparent and true wind angles closer together, and I deliberately set the A/P to sail higher than usual - 27 degrees, (apparent) in order to keep the boatspeed down. But sorry to say, we only tacked once.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by romanos2b

everybody argues about the tiller... which in a cat is everything but a nonsense. And a lot don't talk about the outboard engines which in my opinion is a big non-sense on a boat over 30'.
For the same HP an outboard will consume 2-4 times more fuel than a diesel engine. Which means you'll need bigger tanks, and gasoline needs specific tanks because it is highly flammable and btw you can't keep gasoline for too long in a tank. Other problems, unless you can completely lift up the engines while sailing and keeping them in standing position (especially for 4 strokes engines), they will always get issues with sea water. A gasoline engine gives more trouble than diesel if the fuel is dirty.
So finally, having outboards engines on a catamaran which is a sailing boat that use the engines more often than a monohull force you to have more weight for the tankage, motoring on shorter distances, spend more money on fuel.
The only logical use of outboards would be on a boat that is going to do coastal cruising only.

What an extraordinary diatribe of ill informed dribble.

On consumption, I use a little over a litre an hour. So I dont need bigger tanks, and because I can pull the props out of the water I dont get as much drag so I sail better than the same boat would with diesels, and because they weigh less and are better placed in so far as weight distribution is concerned the boat sails better. All I know about sailing more often on half a boat is that I am sailing when the monos are motoring in light airs. By the monos I mean, Catalinas, bavarias, benetaus, and jenneaus and similar production monos in the 36-42 foot range.

So many outboard boats have done so much ocean voyaging that your statement is demonstrably wrong. As for giving problems, as with all engines maintenance is a good thing, but I have boats on the books here with 15 plus years on Yammie 9.9s that are still going fine, with an extrapolated ownership cost of less than a dollar a day.

I dont know what cats you sailed /owned but they must have been pigs. Be careful you don't extrapolate anecdotal experience into factual evidence.

[Boatguy30]

I'll go with experience and SMJ on this one. When you put diesels on a cat under 40' you're pretty much locking yourself into the poor sailing you describe. The drag of saildrives or shafts and struts will have big impact on pointing. Clearly the atleast 800 lbs of weight increase of dual engines will be well over 1/4 of a cats this sized avaiable payload. I know you'll point to a diesel that weighs only say 235 lbs, but add the oil, coolant, battery cables, mufflers, exhaust hose, extra starting battery, battery isolators, fiberglass engine beds, bronze prop.

I also have a friend building another 34' cat with a slightly smaller cockpit than mine. He's fitting a wheel and his wheel and helm seat, etc is really taking up like 1/2 the cockpit. Tiller would have taken basically none as the tiller and link bars would be behind the mainsheet traveler.

Everyone wants to turn there boat into a Winnebago. Guess what; Winnebagos sail like ****.

[Boatguy30]

Valahalla360-

Out of curiosity, what type of cat and 25 hp do you have? Honda made a 25" XL shaft 25 hp for the US market for a short time but no longer. The Yamaha is available in OZ and NZ with the XL shaft but not in the US. I've pretty much settled on dual 9.9s, but would prefer the simplicity of a single engine.

[valhalla360]

It's a 2007 mercury fuel injected 4stroke on a Gemini 3400. It has the 20" shaft. Before we bought we checked and there is an extension kit to get to a 25" shaft but at a little over 800hrs it's never been an issue, so we never bothered to add it.

Other than standard oil, lube and filter maintenance, hasn't required any repairs.

[monte]

Originally Posted by romanos2b

Show me a track of a cruising cat doing better than 50° degrees, with 4 tacks on offshore condition.
For the reasons why a gasoline outboard engine is a non-sense in ocean passage or offshore cruising, I said it already.

sailing off Italy 2 days ago, 15 knots on the nose with crappy 1m confused swell on the nose as well. Av speed 6.5 knots. I usually sail to about 36 degrees off the wind in these conditions. leeway blows us down to about 45 degrees. bearing away a few degrees gives us another knot boatspeed. Lagoon 380 with full water and fuel tanks, loaded with 5 batteries, WM, bikes etc etc. BTW, most of the yachts traveling to the same island were motoring (about 10 of them) and we continually crossed them as we tacked. Direct course was about 25M and we sailed 35M. The wind swang as we made the last tack and lifted us nicely

[decca]

Ok, no need to answer to Romano2b, as you all did it already
I am very, very pleased with this thread, it's like my Xmas gift. Things are looking better and better, and I got some really nice models, so thank you all!

Just to say more about my motivations, as it has been asked... Well, mainly, I decided to liveaboard because I was seriously annoyed at how complex and complicated life had become aground. But I ended up realizing that the complexity didn't spare my lil'ol' boat, and that maintenance and repairs were EXPENSIVE and time consuming. Monthly bottom cleaning, through-hull failure, pipe blokage (and there are hundreds of pipes to be blocked!), sprawling engine in inaccessible compartment making maintenance a headache, and if you don't run it every other day, ... But I don't give up that easily, so I started making a list of what I need on the next boat to make my life easier and SIMPLER and CHEAPER. One would be surprised at how many of these thousands of electrical wires hidding behind every panel aren't necessary. I have now more than 300 points in this list and it's starting to look pretty relaxing to liveaboard this imaginary boat ! The only point that wasn't to make it "simpler" was to switch from mono to cat, but it was for (on top of all the comfort reason) easy access to shore and shallow water (I sail a lot, and I went aground more than necessary with a 5'1" draft, on top of not being able to go to many, many, many anchorages...), and also easy hull cleaning and possibility to work on the cat for free ( beached at the right time in the right place, you got yourself up to 12 hours to work on your cat in a free yard). Also, an outboard on a big displacement mono is a joke, while on a big cat, it isn't

So I won't discuss my beautiful list any further as you probably don't give a damn. But about these 2 points, tiller and outboards:

- tiller: less failure, less complexity, takes off many parts from the equation and makes it easy to fix, even with linked rudders (which is what I hope to get of course. I don't like the apparent bar though, I prefer an under deck connection and a regular smaller tiller on both sides).

- outboard engine: this is part of my goal of NOTHING under water apart from the hull itself. As everything fails under water or get clogged and there is nothing you can do about it, I decided there will be nothing there. No thru-hulls is easy I've got a solution for each of them, but the issue was the prop, the shaft, all this crap that gets full of barnacles, and other stuff,... So an outboard solves it all. And I don't give a damn about consumption or power, as for me it is only a backup, I'm here to SAIL (and many people did it before me without any engine). Add to this that the outboard is going to cost me no more than 1 grand, while an inboard diesel is more around 20 grand... and here you are as close as it gets to worry free and maintenance free (a simple outboard out of the water will require almost no maintenance if run gently once in a while and washed after use, and if it does, it will be simple, easy to access, and cheap to fix, and if it breaks, it will still be fairly cheap and easy... and marine growth proof from a functional point of view. I understand the reasons behind having an inboard, but then I don't understand why people using these reasons went for a sailboat in the first place.

Ok, I'm on my way to look for the cat that you guys mentionned up there! (BTW, I'm from today in the market for a used old cat, 30' to 42', if you know of anything!)

[decca]

Originally Posted by boatman61

All you need to know about the Tiller/Bar set-up... and they don't take up room...
James Wharram Designs | Unique sailing catamarans, self-build and professional built boats of distinction..

I am aware of the James Wharram Designs, but where is "all I need to know" about linking tillers? His designs might be great but his website is a mess.

[nimblemotors]

I'd be interested in your list. I don't like maintenance either.
The primary positive about outboards is the ability to lift out of the water.
I don't particularly like the nacel? pod needed for them on a bridgedeck.
One thought is to use a 'long tail' outboard, don't think I've seen that before on a cat.