[PCW] In praise of outboard-powered cats

[Georgs Kolesnikovs]

>Quoted with permission from a private email from Lloyd Kubis 
><kubisl at iprimus.com.au>, a Listee Down Under:

I have a Honda 3+ Kw unit and it's a little honey!! It starts with 
the turn of a key,is vibrationless, light to carry for two, very 
quiet even quieter than the smaller 2Kw units that Honda offers and 
it handles short overloads well! Also runs a long time on its own 
tank when in the economy mode. I was going to plumb it into my boat's 
fuel tanks but haven't bothered as it runs long enough for us!!

On my Cat it powers two Crusair airconditioners, one a 5KBtu and a 
16.5KBtu unit, a 40A charger plus misc power points without any 
strain, even when both aircons decide to start up at the same time!! 
Actually a 2Kw Honda will easily power up a 5KBtu aircon and run it!! 
It may even do the 16.5K unit but not both, particularly if both 
start up at the same time!!

Having owned a couple of 40 ft Powercats, one having a pair 
of 6cyl Yanmar diesels and the other a pair of 6 cyl Suzuki 250's on 
them, I have watched the various opinions on gas outboards vs diesel 
inboards with some amusement.   In my opinion, the debate has missed 
a number of differences that in practice matter much more than the 
ones being speculated on!!

Initially, I too spurned gas outboards but then I discovered that 
most of the locals here in Australia on the Gold 
Coast, overwhelmingly preferred outboards on their Cats!!

Having owned the diesel powered Cat first, I quickly discovered the 
problems of owning and operating diesels on smaller Cats.

Even though the engine access on my 40 ft production built Cat was 
much better than most around here, it still presented serious 
service issues because by default having a Cat hull means limited 
side access to the engine. The narrower the hull the worse it gets!

Guess what -- the Yanmar's coolant pump access was on the bottom side 
of the engine. Checking or replacing the cooling water impeller 
was near impossible as it meant disassembly of a good deal of the 
front of the engine, usually worth a day or so and a lot of 
unbelievable language emanating from the hold!! Even simple things 
like belt adjustment and oil filter changes resulted in a major 
effort. I know of one local Cat design where the front of the diesel 
is only accessible by crawling over it from the back and using the 
Braille method of adjusting/fixing things on the front of the engine! 
Try this out on the ocean with a hot engine!!!

Secondly, here in OZ, barnacles seem to grow overnight on anything 
left in the water! My fixed props were always getting fouled, 
reducing the power and causing vibration on the boat. Yes I know 
there are all sorts of magic potions one can put on the props to 
prevent this growth, tried most of them!! All wasted money as they 
all lost effectiveness in a short while due to either wear or running 
on sand bars, which everyone does here eventually!! Many were useless 
as well!!

I also discovered that the problem of using gas on boats is overrated 
as most pleasure craft are gasoline powered.   Locally just this past 
week we had diesel powered commercial trawler with 6000 L of fuel on 
board burn and sink as a result of an engine room fire. With the 
thousands of boats in the area, mostly gasoline powered,  I can't 
remember another fire in last few years. Certainly no CO mishaps!

My major reason for buying the outboard powered boat was the prop 
issue and the fact I could raise them clear of the water. Secondly, 
as we have a lot of thin water around here it was possible to reduce 
the draft and also to get off the bars more easily.

But there were many other benefits that we discovered along the way 
-- the most obvious immediately was how quiet and vibrationless the 
outboard powered boat was, particularly near idle! Many times I had 
to look at the RPM gauge to determine if the engines were running as 
I could not hear them from the helm position! Even at full throttle 
it was much quieter and vibrationless!!

Manoeuvring was much better  and more responsive with the outboards, 
which is one reason why the local fisherman prefer outboards 
particularly when crossing the bar!

Servicing as expected was a breeze and less costly! Mechanics were 
not a problem to find as there was good choice!! Has anyone noticed 
how mechanics suddenly become too busy when they find out that one 
has a diesel  powered cat??? I think I was often put on the bottom of 
the list as being "too hard"!!

There was no diesel fuel bug and polishing to worry about!! No 
barnacles to clean out of the heat exchangers as on the diesels!! I 
could trim the boat easily with outboards to adjust for any load 
differences.

One negative was the use of control cables on my long Cat!! Although 
more positive perhaps and probably good on shorter boats, I'd stay 
away from them on longer boats as they are difficult to 
operate. Fortunately Suzuki has solved this now as they have built-in 
electronic controls on their higher powered engines ~~ a bit too late 
for my engines!!

Cheers!
Lloyd

KaBitta
40ft OzzyCat