Petrol vs Diesel

My advice ?

Like cars .. never buy new !!

1. You spend a fortune kitting it out.
2. You have all the niggles and troubles of poor factory installations etc.
3. When you sell later - you never get back all the costs of kitting out - that's literally freebie to next guy.

I always like to buy at couple years or more age ... then previous has by then kitted boat out ... sorted the crap factory didn't do ... you get a near new for less price.
 
I have a 36ft with twin inboard 5.7s. boat is almost 20y old.
so as mostly people said, you pay for diesel more. and when prices of petrol/diesel are same, you need a lot of long trips to recover that cost. which is not the case for me.
in my area the petrol availability is not an issue and if you take the older generation boats, then diesels really have more smell, noise, smoke..

however, as petrol is more flamable, then on an old boat you need to take more care.
- I have replaced all the fuel lines. the fillup and vent hoses were in really poor condition (could have leaked any time).
note that all the fuel hoses have lifespan of 10y and need to be replaced. you can find year on the hoses labeled.
- installed gas detector in the engine room.
- replaced the blower to a higher performance one and very silent one.

engine condition. if engine has issues it might be consuming more fuel than it should be. but overall chemistry dictates that diesel has more energy density, so you will always need more petrol for same energy.
if you have many layers of antifoul on your bottom, you get more drag and that also increases fuel consumption.

but if I want some justification for myself - then I look at a new 44+ft diesel boats and they at cruise speed consume more diesel than my little one drinks petrol. so - well - it's not that bad... :)
 
45 year old 37ft motorboat with twin 145hp diesels, just did the delivery trip from Holland to Belgium, a distance of 188km or a bit more mainly via canals and against the flow of the Maas River, we averaged about 9litres per hour or about 2 gallons per hour at between 6 to 8knots ( plus a bit at 15knots on Holland's deep ) for the whole trip, around 120 litres.
oldgit said:
In UK petrol boats larger than small speedboats are always considerably cheaper to buy, than their diesel counterparts and usually in much better condition, mainly due to lack of hours run, its all down to cost of petrol compared to marine diesel.
In the UK, a jealously guarded fiddle known as "Red Deisel" has long distorted the boating market, this is not available elsewhere .
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We just discovered there is a way around this being close to the border with Holland. :) we can get diesel at a reduced rate as it will be used for heating and the diesel is un-marked, still it is €1.35/l (£1.12/litre) but better than the €1.63 we pay for the car.

Our boat has a 15 gallon diesel tank for the Webasto diesel heater, it takes the over flow from the injectors into the tank and when full returns it to the main tank. So, the boat feeds Aux tank, to engine and then via heater tank to main tank, balance pipe keeps main and Aux at the same level. There are valves to change that arrangement of feed and returns and balance pipes. Total diesel capacity is 215 gallons or 977 litres
There are separate fillers on the deck for the 3 tanks,
 
Scubadoo said:
Out of curiosity, why would many layers of antifouling cause more drag if it is in good condition i.e. smooth with no flaky paint / "craters"?
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oh, yes you are right. it's not the number of layers, but the smoothnes of the bottom that matters :)
when I bought my boat (15y old) it probably never got a scrape and every year a new layer on top, so the bottom looked not smooth at all.. It was a big project to get all removed till the shiny gelcoat, inspected and fixed some areas where needed.
 
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