Sailing.........motoring, what ratio?

Fascadale

Fascadale

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I have just been writing up this summer’s cruise and have had my suspicions confirmed that we spent less than 20% of the time under sail.

Our route was from the Forth, to Stonehaven, across the North Sea to the Bergen area, up a fjord or two, back to Shetland, then Fair Isle, Orkney, Peterhead, Stonehaven and home to the Forth


Distance travelled............................c1035 nms
Longest passage...............................290nms

Hours sailed....................................c35
Hours engined.................................c172

Nights on the boat...........................30
Days underway...............................20
Full days voluntary tourism...............5
Full days storm induced tourism.........3
Admin/boatwork days.......................2

I am disappointed by the ratio of sail to engine hours.

I picked weather windows for the North Sea to avoid strong winds but ended up motoring most of the way there and back: in Norway the wind, light and fluky. always blows the wrong way up or down the fjord: and after we left Shetland we faced a southerly or south easterly 4/5, or no wind at all, on the way home. If we had sailed it I may still not yet be back at work.

I will admit to not being the most patient of sailors; I’m happy enough to day sail slowly but if the plan is to go 40 or more miles in a day, the engine goes on when the boat speed drops below 4kts.
 
Yes, it goes like that sometimes. I tend to find the ratio is about 50/50. The main problem is that it's usually only SWMBO and me and we keep reminding ourselves that we are doing it for pleasure, and arriving tired in the early hours is not fun any more. Having said that, we returned from Falmouth to the East Coast almost entirely under sail, though did a lot of motoring in windless conditions on our way west along the French coast.

By way of excuse, I would say that we often are forced to do a lot of motoring returning from the Baltic via the Kiel Canal and, almost always, through the Dutch canals. I daren't say what the speed below which I turn the motor on can sometimes be.
 
Going from Miami, Florida to Sapodilla Bay, Turks & Caicos Islands it was 80/20 in favour of the engine. Coming back it was 10/90 !
About 600nm each way. Of course the main was always up on the upwind leg, so not really 80% engine even though it was running 80% of the time.
I guess I just don't do "sailing for the sake of sailing".
 
Fascadale said:
I have just been writing up this summer’s cruise and have had my suspicions confirmed that we spent less than 20% of the time under sail.

Our route was from the Forth, to Stonehaven, across the North Sea to the Bergen area, up a fjord or two, back to Shetland, then Fair Isle, Orkney, Peterhead, Stonehaven and home to the Forth


Distance travelled............................c1035 nms
Longest passage...............................290nms

Hours sailed....................................c35
Hours engined.................................c172

Nights on the boat...........................30
Days underway...............................20
Full days voluntary tourism...............5
Full days storm induced tourism.........3
Admin/boatwork days.......................2

I am disappointed by the ratio of sail to engine hours.

I picked weather windows for the North Sea to avoid strong winds but ended up motoring most of the way there and back: in Norway the wind, light and fluky. always blows the wrong way up or down the fjord: and after we left Shetland we faced a southerly or south easterly 4/5, or no wind at all, on the way home. If we had sailed it I may still not yet be back at work.

I will admit to not being the most patient of sailors; I’m happy enough to day sail slowly but if the plan is to go 40 or more miles in a day, the engine goes on when the boat speed drops below 4kts.
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I can't say I'm surprised. As you say in Norway the coastal winds are light and flukey and in my experience usually right on the nose. But up there I think you just take it and keep going as long as you can. As the summer is so much shorter up there any cruising into August runs the risk of bing stuck the wrong side of the N Sea. One fellow forumite has been sitting near Bergen for the past 5 weeks waiting for a weather window.

I'm like you less than 4 knots and Mr Beta gets a call.
 
my ultimate ambition is to sail without an engine. engineless sailors are the ones who inspire and impress me the most. it's quite hard to learn to do however as all the rya courses for keelboats are geared towards the iron topsail being used.
 
The only time I've cruised without a motor was on the Broads. There was a blissful lack of certainty about where one would end up the next day, which was curiously relaxing, and made for great holidays. Now, manoeuvring under sail, that's another can of worms.
 
Past 75,000 miles 78.6% sail & 21.4% motor (and motorsail). That includes upwind north up the Chilean channels and upwind south down the west coast of NZ and real light winds in the Canadian inside passage.

But we have a boat that will sail well both upwind and in light air.

When we pick a weather window for a shortish passage we have learned to not pick one where the weather is so 'good' that there is no wind.

We don't turn the motor on at any set speed. If the weather is stable we will only turn it on when the mainsail starts slamming. We once sat for 10 days completely becalmed on a mirror smooth sea near the Galapagos. But if we are trying to beat a weather pattern we will use it earlier than that.
 
estarzinger said:
Past 75,000 miles 78.6% sail & 21.4% motor (and motorsail). That includes upwind north up the Chilean channels and upwind south down the west coast of NZ and real light winds in the Canadian inside passage.

But we have a boat that will sail well both upwind and in light air.

When we pick a weather window for a shortish passage we have learned to not pick one where the weather is so 'good' that there is no wind.

We don't turn the motor on at any set speed. If the weather is stable we will only turn it on when the mainsail starts slamming. We once sat for 10 days completely becalmed on a mirror smooth sea near the Galapagos. But if we are trying to beat a weather pattern we will use it earlier than that.
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I admire your patience. As a wage slave, I usually need to be somewhere at roughly the appointed time, so on with Mr Beta.

Come to think of it though when we took a year off we still did a fair bit of motoring. Three days the middle of Biscay in flat calm nearly drove me mad, I did the sums, worked out that we had enough fuel to drive to the coast of Spain so off we went. I'd hopefully not make the same mistake of sailing into the Azores High in the first place....
 
Depends on the sort of sailing you do and your personal timetable. When we took the old cat across Biscay to Spain for a year, the total time out of harbour but with the engine going was 80%. OK quite a lot was motor sailing but only 20% was sail alone. That was because the boat ( a Prout) was really a motor sailer to windward and because a long trip like that was a series of delivery legs.

Pottering around in home waters, it's a lot less than 80%. Maybe 50%. And I guess if we went transatlantic it would be more like 5%.
 
Varies widely...
with the lads....90% sail

with SWIMBO..(not keen sailor).....50% sail

Last year ...33% pure sail...33% pure motor...33% motorsail

0ver the last 7 years

7000miles with 700 engine hours
Allowing for time spent charging batteries, engine idling waiting in que for lock etc that's about 60% sail and 40% motor
 
Bit of information that is probably of no use to this topic; but,
there are some figures I found for Brunel's SS Great Britain on a run from Melbourne to Britain. It did the Australia run for many years.

Maybe these are the first figures for motor yachts.

On it's trip back from Melbourne to Britain in 1860 it was under canvas alone for 52.8% of the time, combined sail and steam for 31.7% and steam alone for only 15.5%.

It must be remembered that she could hold her own as a sailing ship with the largest and fastest clippers afloat.

Her cargo included 504 passengers , 592 bales of wool , 7,472 ozs of gold, one case of spirit levels plus 20 live snakes.

Not bad.
 
ChrisE said:
I admire your patience.
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From our log, 30% of our time is in winds 10kts (apparent) or less. So it does really help to have a boat that goes in the light stuff.

It also helps to be decent at weather analysis - 10kts of breeze is lovely but 5kts (with a swell) can be hell with the mainsail banging around. It may be a longer route but we much prefer to find the track with 10kts and steer away from the 0-5kts. The racers have gotten quite good at figuring out how far to go around a high to maintain breeze and that information is available to us cruisers if we look.
 
I hate motoring! 92% sailing this year which is probably about normal. If offshore I would rather heave to and wait for a favourable wind than motor. If inshore, I have a policy of motoring if I have been sailing at less than 2 knots for more than 2 hours unless I am close to an anchorage when the wind dies in which case I am willing to motor.

I take the view that I sail to use the elements as best I can. As I am retired I can afford to take such a relaxed attitude. I am sure I would see things differently if I had to sail against the clock.
 
estarzinger said:
From our log, 30% of our time is in winds 10kts (apparent) or less.
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Light weather sails that cover all wind angles - symmetric spinnaker, asymmetric and code zero headsail - makes a huge reduction in the number of engine hours needed to make reasonable progress. And if you only use them when you'd otherwise be doing less than 4-5 knots under white sails a crew of gorillas isn't required to handle them.
 
michael taylor said:
I hate motoring! 92% sailing this year which is probably about normal. If offshore I would rather heave to and wait for a favourable wind than motor. If inshore, I have a policy of motoring if I have been sailing at less than 2 knots for more than 2 hours unless I am close to an anchorage when the wind dies in which case I am willing to motor.

I take the view that I sail to use the elements as best I can. As I am retired I can afford to take such a relaxed attitude. I am sure I would see things differently if I had to sail against the clock.
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impressive...i want to be like you!
 
I sail an engineless boat however I stopped feeling smug last year when I realised how long I spent in Marinas waiting for a usefull wind. So I reckon my sailing/marina ratio equates to a similar 25%sailing 75% engine as the more fortunite plutocrats with a built in engine.
 
r_h said:
Light weather sails that cover all wind angles - symmetric spinnaker, asymmetric and code zero headsail - makes a huge reduction in the number of engine hours needed to make reasonable progress. And if you only use them when you'd otherwise be doing less than 4-5 knots under white sails a crew of gorillas isn't required to handle them.
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Completely agree. We were a very early adaptor to code zero's and get a great deal of value from them. We have an a-chute in a sock but are honestly using it less and less and the zero more and more. We have never carried an s-chute, and in stronger winds (+15) we fly would headsails and get decent boat speed and in lighter winds we will want to be jybing broader angles (to build up the apparent wind) anyway

We used to have a 'no white cap' rule for the light sails but as we have gotten more experienced and gradually gotten more comfortable carrying them and handling them in a bit stronger winds, so the rule now is more like 'no white horses'
 
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