towed fuel tank

[Catigale]

90 gallons is about 18 cubic feet of space? That's a lot of real estate to find even on the new luna Sea 2

Maybe you should tow the Mac as a tender / refueler ?

[BOAT]

That middle sail is over sheeted, shirley

That's because of the picture on the middle sail, and don't call me Shirley . .

Matt,

Yes, you can tow diesel and yes it will float and no - I see no reason to "tether it with a hose" because when it's time to take out fuel you just pull in the kayak and pump the fuel.

The issue is the weight of fuel - it's too heavy. The dragging of a huge mostly submerged (dead whale) behind the boat will make you so slow I doubt there would really be any real range extention with all your power going into towing a "dead whale" around.

The only way to have more fuel is to have in on board and you need a boat large enough to displace the weight of the fuel properly over a large enough area of water so the boat does not sink down so far as to just create more drag and thus consume more fuel.

In my mind i just don't think it would gain a significant amount of range.

Fuel is 7 pounds per gallon, right? So another 50 gallons is 350 pounds, right? How many gallons were you considering?

[81venture]

Yeah, I thought about the storm danger, but theft never occurred to me. Illegal? Didn't think of that either, but I'm not sure how you would find out.

Diesel isn't going to detonate. It's amongst the safest fuels there are. You have to mix it with fertilizer if you want it to explode.

thats easy...tow the Fertilizer in a seperate Kayak

[BOAT]

I would not expect there is going to be a lot of theft of your "towed dead whale fuel tank" out in the middle of the ocean where there are no people except folks that already HAVE a lot of fuel and you are not going to be near any ports full of "fuel thieves" with all that fuel or why would you be towing it in the first place????

THEFT, is the LAST thing you would need to worry about.

The real problem hear is the 800 pound partially submerged "dead whale"anchor your towing around behind your boat. After the first 2 weeks at sea I bet you a dollar you cut the line and let it go.

[Catigale]

I would not expect there is going to be a lot of theft of your "towed dead whale fuel tank" out in the middle of the ocean where there are no people except folks that already HAVE a lot of fuel and you are not going to be near any ports full of "fuel thieves" with all that fuel or why would you be towing it in the first place????

THEFT, is the LAST thing you would need to worry about.

The real problem hear is the 800 pound partially submerged "dead whale"anchor your towing around behind your boat. After the first 2 weeks at sea I bet you a dollar you cut the line and let it go.

After setting it on fire first of course..

[mastreb]

So I explored all the spaces and voids on the new boat over the weekend, and have found two places for large tanks. It will need to be a flexible tank to be inserted into the space, but I've also found that they make those. The stern 2' of the boat is a mechanical space behind the two aft cabins. The rudder posts and autopilot ram are in there, along with the structural mounts for the rudders and cross-bracing to the cockpit sole, hull, and transom. But it's got a big void area with nothing in it between the two rudders and below the autopilot ram. Nothing moving below the ram, and big enough I think to hold about 15 cf. of diesel in a bladder. So that's about 112 gallons, which makes 145 gallons overall, so I'd get about 200 hours of motoring at 5 knots or 1000nm of range. That should do in a pinch.

Also the chain locker is gigantic. Its the forward 3' of the boat from hull to deck, with nothing in it but rode, about 5' deep, and with the vertical bullnose, it's quite large. It's also completely partitioned from the rest of the boat by fiberglass. I estimate its over 40 cubic feet, so another flexible tank in there would add 300 gallons.

The boat's humans+cargo capacity is 6,000 lbs. to retain the All Ocean rating, so 450 gallons of diesel would be half of that, and a solid maximum. That's a 3000nm range and more than enough for any eventuality.

And you've convinced me that towing fuel isn't a great idea.

[Steve K]

Hey Matt,

Please check into the legality of a fuel tank in the forward void.
Most larger boats have a forward void with watertight bulkhead built in to prevent losing the boat in the event of forward collision (which is the most common type of collision).
Diesel does have a high flash point, so chance of explosion in a collision wouldn't be as dangerous as with gasoline. However, just the possible spill that could happen, could get you into a world of problems, particularly in So. Cal. coastal areas. I can see the South Coast A.Q.M.D. putting you away for years......... Your insurance company would likely drop you like a hot rock and they'd make Manson your cell mate

Anyway..... point made. Don't know it would be a problem, but do find out for sure. Also, I know I wouldn't want fuel stored in the bow, knowing how many lost, slightly submerged containers and other things are out there in the deep blue.

JMHO

Best Breezes,
Steve K.

[BOAT]

Hey Matt, I hear all the cautions from your fellow sailors but really no disrespect to anyone I say ignore it it all.

Go ahead and throw a bladder into the bottom of the forward chain locker and stick one between the rudder posts too. Why the hull not? It won't hurt anything. And don't waste your time trying the pipe the bladders into the engine fuel system. Just transfer the fuel from the bladders to your mail tank as needed (as it is I I doubt your ever going to need to use any of that fuel you would be storing on board anyways), but if it makes you feel better go ahead and put in the bladders and fill them up. It won't hurt anything.

I bet it takes you years to use it all up.

[mastreb]

I do appreciate the cautionary statements. I'm good at not thinking through all the ramifications of my crazy ideas.

I'm likely to take your advice not to do anything permanent with the tankage. I'll rig up a hose with gas caps and an inline fuel pump that I can use to transfer fuel as necessary.

With flexible tanks, I can use them when needed and remove them when not. Pretty sure thats the way I'll go.

[Russ]

Matt, so what do you need all this fuel for anyway? Where are you planning to take that boat?

It's a beautiful boat and probably very fast, but the design is not my preference for blue water cruising for long distances.

[BOAT]

Yeah! What he said! That boat is faster under sail than it is under power anyways - so what's the point of having all that bunker C onboard? Are you using it as a tanker? You going into the oil business?

[mastreb]

Matt, so what do you need all this fuel for anyway? Where are you planning to take that boat?

It's a beautiful boat and probably very fast, but the design is not my preference for blue water cruising for long distances.

In San Diego we have a wind problem: The coastal and offshore prevailing winds are strongly from the North East, which makes downwind sailing to Cabo San Lucas and Hawaii easy, but sailing back extremely difficult and time consuming. The run from Panama to San Diego is by many accounts the most difficult beating in the world (not the worst seas, just the most consistent heading into the wind for the longest period of time). It's so bad that its faster for sailboats to sail Panama to Hawaii, Hawaii to Alaska, and then down to San Deigo which as you can imagine adds a few days to your trip.

This means that getting south to Mexico or West to Hawaii is a piece of cake, but getting home is difficult (which doesn't bother me) and time consuming (which I don't have as much flexibility about).

Returning home from Hawaii means sailing due north to Alaska and then coming down the west coast of North America along with a series of polar low squalls. Typically one has to go above 36N at a minimum to have winds that will carry you around.

But if you can motor for a week through the doldrums of the North Pacific High, then you can sail back downwind from a much lower latitude and shave a month off your transit time.

With Cabo (actually La Paz and the Sea of Cortez for us), its more about being able to come back dead against the wind rather than beating back off-shore. That's purely the time constraint of not yet being retired, and it being cheaper to pay for diesel than to pay a crew to bring my boat back for me.

As for the offshore capabilities, Yeah, I wonder about it. Conventional wisdom says you want long and Skinny, like a MacGregor 65 or 70, for the most comfortable passages. That said, I've lived at sea for years and never been affected by motion sickness, so I'm not particularly worried about its "comfort ratio". Its very beamy which would normally be problematic in even moderate seas, but if there's any kind of wind, it gets right up on that chine with most of the boat out of the water and becomes far less wave affected--at least, in the small waves we have in San Diego bay. The wave-piercing bow also seems to be very effective: Large boat wakes here in the bay have little effect as long as you're bow-to.

Having crossed the pacific four times, I find the weather is nice more than 90% of the time, and I'd rather have the space 90% of the time in trade for some extra motion 10% of the time. Perhaps that's because I don't get seasick. Capsize ratio and stability index numbers _say_ that the boat can do heavy weather. There's no such thing as comfort in Force 8 winds in any kind of boat, so at that point its purely about surviving capsize, which I'm comfortable this boat can do. One nice effect of beam is that floating on either side, keel present or not, it's companionway is above the waterline and its watertight. Also, it can carry its own weight and its crew completely flooded, according to its certification papers, despite being a fin keel boat (which I've never heard of before).

I think being able to easily single-hand a boat is a mandatory safety feature, and both myself and the admiral can very effectively single-hand this boat. Not sure how much bigger we could go though.

I'll be getting it out into the San Pedro in some decent sized waves this spring to really test it. Worst case scenario, I have to trade up

[BOAT]

A Better test would be the area off the coast of San Francisco.

[mastreb]

A Better test would be the area off the coast of San Francisco.

Yeah, just need a few gallons of Diesel to get up there against the wind

[BOAT]

It's just like sailing to Dana Point Matt, only you make larger tacks. Just head straight out to sea due North-West and tack back in from the back side of Catalina - there should be LOTS of air out there to get you back to shore at a really good clip of 7 to 8 knotts - That would put you around Point Magu - from there you can make the passage inside the channel islands to Point Conception.

Once you get past Point Conception you got it nailed - You can do the last 250 miles using the strong winds that blow north along the coast from there. Would that work?