My friends and neighbors around my house are all joking about how we still have a boat with gas prices and especially diesel being so high. They keep saying "And they never leave the dock!" Well the truth is that yes we still do leave the dock. Not as often as if it were 1999 when you could buy gas or diesel for 1.10 per gallon. Boy those where the days.
Yes, we are paying more for gas and diesel but, here's the catch. Back when both gas and diesel were the same price around a dollar, for a gas boat to go from my marina to Chicago and back would have taken 3-4 gallons of gas to push a 40 foot boat for a mile. Now, that's saying that in 1999 a gas boat would have cost it's owner 3-5 dollars to go anywhere per mile!
A diesel boat would travel the same distance for (1 mile) for only 1/3 to 1/4 of the cost of a gas boat because of the way that diesel engines are made. They turn less rpm's, have bigger propellers, more torque and generally get much better feul economy than a gas counterpart. So how it's turning out is that now the diesel boat owners are paying now about the same that a gas powered boat owner would have paid to go the same distance in 1999.
So when people ask me if I ever use my boat or leave the dock, I say YES I do. Because mine are powered by Twin V-drive Cummins 330 hp diesels. My boat will travel at full throttle 33mph and get about a mile per gallon. So if the feul cost is 4.40 per gallon like it is at my home marina, then yes it costs me $4.40 per mile to go anywhere.
Now if you are one of those people who had bought a gas powered boat because the initial NEW cost was less than the diesel (by about $40,000), you'd be saving the money up front, but be spending now about $12-15.00 to go just a mile down the lake. That get's real expensive real fast!. That is unless you are a stock market genius or an oil tycoon or a real estate barron like Donald Trump or Oprah.
There is another boat on my dock which get's 1/4 mile per gallon and it's the exact same boat as mine with 502 gas 440 hp engines in it. He hardly goes anywhere.
So to my neighbors at home, Yes I still do go out! |
