What is the true state of the U.K Boat industry ?

MapisM said:
Well, forget the "spare" if you wish, but that's how his "syphon some power" concept came across - to me, anyway.
Regardless, if that's all you have to criticize in my train of thought, I can live with it. :encouragement:

Btw, what you are now saying is not how the throttles work on diesel engines (within limits, obviously).
When the captain press the magic button without touching the throttles, rpm/speed do not drop one bit, in theory.
You should only see the difference in the MTU (in this specific case) displays, which would show a higher load and instantaneous fuel burn.
Click to expand...

Yes I’ve toyed with that .Not sure let’s discuss -
Thinking smacking into a biggish wave on the nose —- watch the speed drop off a bit - load stays the same ,so does the fuel burn , then speed recovers until the next time .
So,s the loads just set via the throttles say 80% but the speed varies depending on the wave resistance.

So ,s extrapolate that —- set the load in this case @ 14 knots on this boat .Press the magic button .
The resistance is now the shaft geny not the wave .
I would expect the load to stay the same ,but the extra energy taken out to drive the shaft geny s ( prob low friction brushless jobbies ) to slow the boat a bit . For the same load / fuel burn .

If they want to keep going @ 14 knots - then after a few mins when the speed drop has occurred, ease up the sticks and the load / fuel burn follows .

Or , when batting along watching the load / fuel burn , if you drop the flaps deep .
The only thing that changes ( sticks nit touched ) is the speed drops .
What I’ve done here is deliberately increase the drag —- but the engine s don’t know that and carry on as before .
Was thinking the engines don,t know if the magic button is pressed or not .
 
Last edited:
That's not my understanding of how throttles work on a diesel engine.
In fact, they are more akin to a cruise control in a car, and completely different from petrol engines.
By keeping the lever at say 80%, what you are telling the engines is that you want them to spin at 80% of their max rated rpm.
The ecu then takes care of complying with your request, sending more or less fuel as necessary, depending on the load, at any given time.
The reason why you see the speed dropping when hitting a wave is that physically the engines can't react fast enough to avoid that.

PS: it is indeed possible, without touching the throttles, to increase/reduce the boat speed depending on the trim tabs position.
But that's not due to the fact that the engines increase/reduce their rpm, it's because the prop slip reduces/increases when the total drag goes up/down.
In the hybrid Columbus scenario the hull drag is not affected by the operation mode.
 
Last edited:
MapisM said:
That's not my understanding of how throttles work on a diesel engine.
In fact, they are more akin to a cruise control in a car, and completely different from petrol engines.
By keeping the lever at say 80%, what you are telling the engines is that you want them to spin at 80% of their max rated rpm.
The ecu then takes care of complying with your request, sending more or less fuel as necessary, depending on the load, at any given time.
The reason why you see the speed dropping when hitting a wave is that physically the engines can't react fast enough to avoid that.
Click to expand...

But with full flap down the load / fuel burn stay the same ( plenty of time for ECUs to figure out )
Just the speed changes to flap position.
Down slower
Up faster .
Engines can,t see the drag of flaps or see the hull temporarily immersed by a big wave on the nose .I actually think the ecu ,s are fast enough if they wanted to be to react btw - buts let’s leave ucu speed aside .They work in milliseconds.

I don’t think they can see any extra resistance from the gearbox engagement of the “shaft geny “
Hmm interesting.
I agree with a fouled ( therefore more friction ) prop for the same speed rpm the load / fuel burn is more at the end of the season ., for the same earlier season speed .
Or for the same say 80% load and fuel burn you go slower .
But in both examples the throttles are in different positions.

That’s what I think you mean along the lines of “ props move boats and engines turn props “

But here I think ( still not sure joining up the dots ) it’s all set up and running .
In my case I drop the flaps increasing drag boat slows for the same load / fuel burn
Columbus press the magic button the shaft speed drops for the same load / fuel burn .
Sticks not touched .
 
MapisM said:
PS: it is indeed possible, without touching the throttles, to increase/reduce the boat speed depending on the trim tabs position.
But that's not due to the fact that the engines increase/reduce their rpm, it's because the prop slip reduces/increases when the total drag goes up/down.
In the hybrid Columbus scenario the hull drag is not affected by the operation mode.
Click to expand...

Agree the propslip is the missing denominator here .Add that back and it makes sense .
 
Also, Volvo (and others) engineer the torque curve to gently tail off linearly above hump speed.
This means that given a fixed throttle position, if you slow the boat down at planing speed by aiming for a wave, and you manage to make the revs drop, the torque increases a little.
Net result is that the revs don't vary much with individual waves, unless things get really hairy.

.
 
Last edited:
Deleted User said:
Good question actually. If you believe the big 3 UK builders (and the big Italian builders) they are all sold out for months and business is booming but on the other hand, Broom and Aquastar have recently gone out of business and I know for a fact that Hardy are struggling to sell their bigger boats at least. I think jrudge is right in that production capacity has been much reduced since the financial crash so selling out is much easier than it was and whilst deals are not as generous as they were, large discounts are still on offer, at least judging by the offers I've had recently. Personally I think this speaks of a market in which there is moderate demand but all that demand is being gobbled up by the big builders with their marketing campaigns, active dealers and discount driven deals leaving, the smaller builders with few if any buyers

In the long run of course the motorboat market, at least for big planing hulled motorboats, is finished because environmental regulations will hammer the use of diesel engines and ever rising fuel costs will make moving 40t of plastic with 2 monster diesel engines at 25kts unaffordable for everbody except the mega rich. If petrol/diesel cars are to be banned from being sold in the UK and elsewhere some time in the next 25 years, it is not conceivable that a motorboat industry based on selling boats powered by fuel guzzling internal combustion engines can continue in business, at least not in the USA and Europe. Lets hope that somebody in the boat building industry is thinking about alternative means of propulsion
Click to expand...
Looks like Mike will be right. We’ve had pressure put on the car industry and now they are starting to poke the monster that is global shipping
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43584963
At some point the focus has to be pleasure boats, if for no other reason than a lot of regulation does not differentiate between pleasure craft and ships
 
jfm said:
I don't disagree your general thrust here Nigel but you have to be mindful of quantities using current solar power and battery tech. Your 4x140w might on a good day make 6.7kwh (I've assumed they run at that output 12 hours, which is generous). That's about 20 megajoules. Diesel contains is 3.5 MJ per litre, so your panels make the same energy quantity as say 10 litres of diesel (allowing for inefficient burn), which is a side show rounding difference in the context of the boating market/industry imho.

Separately, outside the super yacht world (where you need to manage the energy losses from turning over huge Diesel engines) it is hard to see the point of diesel electric propulsion given that there is no energy to recover from braking.
Click to expand...
I agree solar electric is a non starter. By the way, your MJ conversion factor is out by X10 it should be 35. With a 25% efficiency of engine/ gearbox you get near to 8 MJ at the prop with a litre of diesel compares to say 16 MJ with his solar electric setup at the prop. So only 2 lt of diesel equivalent per day. Pretty useless.
 
Bouba said:
Looks like Mike will be right. We’ve had pressure put on the car industry and now they are starting to poke the monster that is global shipping
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43584963
At some point the focus has to be pleasure boats, if for no other reason than a lot of regulation does not differentiate between pleasure craft and ships
Click to expand...

I think diesel will be here for a very long time to come. If it is taxed into oblivion or if it is priced sky high because of supply and demand constraints then it will still be used. There is just no alternative. Nothing that is as energy dense, as safe (for boats and planes) or as simple a technology and even with the worst scenario there will be nothing as cheap. It can be made from so many renewable or not so renewable sources like bio gas, biomass, plant oil, coal, algae oil. The alternatives are nearly viable now. As soon as prices rise substantially these alternatives will be viable and will be implemented. If the MMGW lobby and the BBC have their way we will end up with just the renewable diesel options. If the air quality issues take over, we will clean up diesel. Whatever happens we will still have diesel. Except for a very few purist sailors even sailing boats can’t do without diesel.
 
Zing said:
I think diesel will be here for a very long time to come. If it is taxed into oblivion or if it is priced sky high because of supply and demand constraints then it will still be used. There is just no alternative. Nothing that is as energy dense, as safe (for boats and planes) or as simple a technology and even with the worst scenario there will be nothing as cheap. It can be made from so many renewable or not so renewable sources like bio gas, biomass, plant oil, coal, algae oil. The alternatives are nearly viable now. As soon as prices rise substantially these alternatives will be viable and will be implemented. If the MMGW lobby and the BBC have their way we will end up with just the renewable diesel options. If the air quality issues take over, we will clean up diesel. Whatever happens we will still have diesel. Except for a very few purist sailors even sailing boats can’t do without diesel.
Click to expand...

I think compressed natural gas is a viable alternative in the short term future.
 
jfm said:
Yep, and I'm not massively arguing with you. But if fuel became 3x today's price due to tax hikes would it really stop everyone boating? When I started out with a fairline 42 in 1999 fuel was 20p. Now is is 6x or more. I would have bought that boat then if fuel were 120p then. A big fuel rise will imho impact behaviours but not the very existence of boating per se. Man has always pleasure boated.
Click to expand...
Dont remind me. When I first started boating in the early 90's, I was buying fuel from Mr Diesel (anyone know what happened to them - lovely couple?) at 12-15p/litre and I didnt even think about the cost of diesel. We thought nothing of bashing across to Guernsey for the weekend. Now with fuel 10x as much I definitely do think about the cost and whilst it doesnt curtail my cruising it certainly makes me go slower and my impression is that many other boaters are far more careful about their fuel usage these days too

Another big issue that the motorboating industry has is the lack of interest from young people. Whether this is because of awareness of the fuel cost of running a motorboat, an environmental conscience or simply other activities being more interesting I dont know but I suspect that one of the ways that the industry is going to attract younger buyers is to make running costs a lot more affordable and of course fuel is a big part of that
 
Bouba said:
Looks like Mike will be right. We’ve had pressure put on the car industry and now they are starting to poke the monster that is global shipping
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43584963
At some point the focus has to be pleasure boats, if for no other reason than a lot of regulation does not differentiate between pleasure craft and ships
Click to expand...

The construction industry is also being poked now, at least in the UK. We are starting to see an increasing number of enquiries for machines with electric motors rather than diesel engines. IMHO we are going to get to a situation in which diesel powered construction machinery is going to be banned from many city centre areas in the future. Probably long after I've gone though
 
Deleted User said:
The construction industry is also being poked now, at least in the UK. We are starting to see an increasing number of enquiries for machines with electric motors rather than diesel engines. IMHO we are going to get to a situation in which diesel powered construction machinery is going to be banned from many city centre areas in the future. Probably long after I've gone though
Click to expand...

We have put stop on buying any more diesel trucks in favour of long term hire which we can chuck back as soon as greener machines come along. The hire industry are often cheaper in the short term than buying which tells a story.
There is little point in committing to a new diesel truck only to find its not allowed in cities the minute it is paid for, rendering it practically worthless.
 
BMF have recently released a document on the possible futures of leisure boating activities breaking it down into the various age groups and what clubs (and others) need to do in order to survive.
The old fork out a fortune up front to buy a boat,find somewhere to keep it, maintain and run it are fading fast.
The generations coming after the baby boomers simply have no interest/time or money to pursue boat ownership and all that goes with it.
Worth a read.....
 
As a general note to the diesel discussion, the limiting factor to diesel usage is not going to be it's physical availability but, shall we say, social sustainability, if my choice of words make sense.
 
oldgit said:
BMF have recently released a document on the possible futures of leisure boating activities breaking it down into the various age groups and what clubs (and others) need to do in order to survive.
The old fork out a fortune up front to buy a boat,find somewhere to keep it, maintain and run it are fading fast.
The generations coming after the baby boomers simply have no interest/time or money to pursue boat ownership and all that goes with it.
Worth a read.....
Click to expand...

Do you have a link as can not find anything recent
 
scubaman said:
As a general note to the diesel discussion, the limiting factor to diesel usage is not going to be it's physical availability but, shall we say, social sustainability, if my choice of words make sense.
Click to expand...

That was my point. At some stage in the future it simply wont be socially acceptable to power 20t of plastic at 20knots for pleasure only whilst consuming fossil fuel at a rate of a gallon a mile and spewing a load of CO2 and NOx into the atmosphere. I dont say that as any kind of econutter because I am far from being one of those, just it seems that is the way the world is going
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Other threads that may be of interest

ari
What is your lifejacket policy?
3 4 5
Replies
86
Views
3K
Greg2
Greg2
wombat88
Sorry, another what boat thread...
2
Replies
26
Views
998
Scubadoo
S
cyberkryten
We finally bought a boat - Merry Fisher 895s2
2 3
Replies
41
Views
2K
Cathy*
C

Share this page

Top