Diesel engined boat fire

I am nice and I deserve a bigger boat and I don't care if I have to noble all the In-Laws to get it

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ArthurWood

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Who says diesels are safer than petrol?
Last month a 10 month old Tiara 40 (IPS drives BTW) in our marina caught fire due to a wiring fault under the helm. Fire brigade pumped so much water and foam into it that it sank.
The sailboat next to it was also destroyed.
As the stats suggest, most boat fires are caused by electrical faults.
 
There's more energy in diesel than in petrol, but the fire / ignition temperatures are VERY different.

Petrol:
Flash point: >45 °C
Autoignition temperature: 246 °C

Diesel:
Flash point: >62 °C
Autoignition temperature: 210 °C

So it is more difficult to get diesel to catch fire but, when heated, diesel ignites spontaneously at a lower temperature

Flash point is the lowest temperature at which a flammable liquid will mix with air and can catch fire.

Autoignition point is the temperature at which a flammable liquid will ignite of its own jolly accord.

(given normal atmospheric pressure and composition)
 
<< Flash point is the lowest temperature at which a flammable liquid will mix with air and can catch fire.

Autoignition point is the temperature at which a flammable liquid will ignite of its own jolly accord.>>

I think I remember all that from my chemistry degree course. I also worked in a fuels testing lab a long, long time ago. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Trust me, I know two friends who are alive today because their boat was diesel and not petrol. The difference is a) time to escape, minutes or seconds, and b) flames or explosion! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif Everything burns irrespective of how it started even if often electrical, what matters is what can fuel a fire.
 
The fire must have been well under way before the diesel ignited to heat it to ignition point and the wiring fault must have been very serious to do this. I think in this case it is unfair to blame the diesel for the fire. If it had been petrol there is the likelihood of a large explosion which could have damaged far more vessels.
 
I agree with both your and OceanFroggie comments.
But even without considering mayday situations, there's another major reason why diesels are safer than petrol: reliability.
And yes, I know that modern electronic is getting more and more reliable, I know that in the US petrol engines are widely used, and so forth...
But, as a matter of fact, I have a personal experience of towing boats who lost power.
6 or 7 of them, can't even remeber exactly. At least two of those were in real danger, going to hit the rocks in a matter of minutes. And I heard similar stories from other boating friends.
Cumulating both my direct experience and other cases reported from friends, would you guess...
 
Fire is a very bad thing on any boat period, however look across the pond at our colonial cousins who have been merrily zipping about in petrol boats. they don't die in any huge numbers and lets face it when it comes to commonsense the average Joe is not quite up there /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

If you are sensible and take precations then you reduce the risk of accident. I have in my younger days filled my bike while sitting astride and watched horrified as petrol overflowed the tank and cascaded over the hot header pipes, instant vapourisation , no fire, whew /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif
 
if the criteria is throwing matches into buckets of fuel then yes diesel is safer /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Simply to show you how dangerous petrol in boats can be.when youve seen a cruiser with the cabin blown clean off the hull, you would see what I mean! I am sorry to say I would not travel in a petrol engined boat,thats my opinion and I would not change it, unlike a car, the petrol cannot get away.
 
Let's face it; no-one's going to agree on this.

The numbers of boats of any complexion that catch fire are infinitessimally small. The best way to ensure that yours doesn't join the list is to get fuel lines and connections regularly checked, look out for leaks and for rotten fuel tanks and keep your engine bay extractor fan running as a matter of routine. Once a petrol boat catches fire, it's going to burn quicker than a diesel one (though frankly, grp crackles away fairly merrily, come what may), and *perhaps* it'll be more likely to explode. However, from the recent boat fires discussed on here, most of them seem to have started because of an electrical fault, including at least a couple where an unattended dehumidifier has got things going. So far as I can recall, they've all been diesels.

My boat's petrol powered, because it's what I could afford in the range in which I was looking. It's regularly serviced, and relatively new and I have no qualms about going out with young kids on board. Am I happy messing about in coastal waters? Yes. Would I go cross-Channel? No; but that's a reliability thing, not because I'm worried about turning into a fireball halfway across.

What does worry me is the thought of having gas on board for cooking - now there's a really dangerous substance. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
 
This is true if you drop a match into a bucket of diesel it will extinguish the match. If you dropped it in a bucket of petrol you'd be dead!
 
Yes, indeed. In the mid-70's a yacht caught fire in Robin's yard at Porthmadog, the two yachts next to it were also destroyed. The heat was so intense that yachts afloat 30 yards away in the channel also caught fire and sank - but not before the heat from them ignited more yachts in a parallel trot another 15M away. The pictures of all of this still hang in the restaurant at MYC.
 
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