[PUP] Motor+sailer vs Motor-or-Sailer

[Scott E. Bulger]

Kevin said:  I think a key shift in philosophy is one represented by Paine's
SteadySailer which  has the design goal to maintain 10 knots through the
combination of wind AND diesel power


Scott retorts:  This posting is an example of exactly what has gone wrong in
the last few days.  Because we have opened the door to the discussion on
Sail we are loosing focus on the content of this forum.  It's no surprise to
me that sailors are discovering adding power makes sense.  This is not a
Adding Power to Sail forum.  We don't use our props to generate power when
there is lots of wind.  There are innumerable forums for sailors to debate
these topics.

Please, we need to return to the focus of this list, Beebe realized the
sails on his boat were worthless after building and voyaging Passagemaker,
to quote:

Voyaging Under Power, Third Edition Lessons Learned, page 34, Sailing Rig.
This feature is hard to justify by the facts of our cruising.  It is not a
good emergency propulsion system for this reason:  If the engine should
fail, sail would get you somewhere, but the chances of its being where you
wanted to go are pretty slim.  consequently, your cruise would be pretty
well ruined, while an alternative power system would allow the cruise to
continue.  In addition, an efficient sailing rig is expensive-more so than
another diesel engine.

Please, if there is sufficient interest in establishing a multi-hull power
assisted sailing forum, then someone should approach Georgs and see if he's
interested in hosting one.  For the Passagemaking Under Power forum, we
propel the boats with diesel engines (or hybrid diesel electric).  The
primary propulsion is not sail with the motor ticking over.

Scott Bulger, PUP List admin