Definition of trawler?

[OldDan1943]

Every time the moon is full, the "definition of a trawler" appears.

 

[Voyager3]

A description vice a definition. When your on your way home, hauling butt, after a few weeks out, still using the same fuel you started with, granddaughter asleep in the pilot house and you find out the blip on the radar that has been catching up to you is actually a sailboat out for a leisurely day cruise. LOL

 

[Voyager3]

Trawler = 1/speedboat

Nice boat!!!

 

[mvweebles]

The idea of a pleasure trawler originated with Robert Beebe and the design of his trawler, Passagemaker, as outlined in his book "Voyaging Under Power" published in 1975. From there the term has been expanded, mostly in the 1990s by the public relations weenies who wanted potential buyers to see any boat their company was making as a "trawler." Now, the terms is used interchangeably with everything from an over-powered planing hull, to an overpowered (in true "trawler" terms) semi-displacement hull such as Grand Banks, to semi-displacement hull speed trawlers, but hasn't progressed as far as including jet skis, AFAIK!

Fishing trawlers have always been "trawlers" and that is where Robert Beebe got his original idea of a pleasure trawler.

Well, hull #1 of the venerable Willard 36 run was delivered in 1961. The last hull #40 (my vessel) was delivered in 1970, so several years prior to Beebe's book, though a W36 Trawler is pictured in his book (fyi - the PH config was introduced by Willard around 1964 and called "Trawler" whereas the original sedan layouts designed by Wm Garden were called "Cruisers").

I'm back to one of the early thread responses that advocated trawler is more of a lifestyle than a vessel - the PMM definition posted also works for me (basically said sail-cruising under power). A focus on safety, distance, economy, and accommodation for stores and spares, you arrive at a magic carpet that enhances the journey vs the destination. When folks talk about having a turn of speed to outrun weather or keep a schedule, they have exited the trawler world. It's a different mindset.

Life at jogging speed.

 

[rslifkin]

When folks talk about having a turn of speed to outrun weather or keep a schedule, they have exited the trawler world. It's a different mindset.

I'd say that one can go both ways. If we're talking about a heavy semi-displacement boat that has enough power to go somewhat fast with horrendous fuel burn and plowing a ton of water, that still can be a trawler, just one that has big enough engines shoved in to let it run faster every once in a while (but it's not meant to do it regularly or for long periods of time).

Very different from something like Art's Tollycraft or my boat, both of which were built with the intention of running fast most of the time and both of which will comfortably cruise (with plenty of power left in reserve) at the same speed a lot of Grand Banks and others will achieve at WOT with the dog pushing on the swim platform.

 

[mvweebles]

I'd say that one can go both ways. If we're talking about a heavy semi-displacement boat that has enough power to go somewhat fast with horrendous fuel burn and plowing a ton of water, that still can be a trawler, just one that has big enough engines shoved in to let it run faster every once in a while (but it's not meant to do it regularly or for long periods of time).

Very different from something like Art's Tollycraft or my boat, both of which were built with the intention of running fast most of the time and both of which will comfortably cruise (with plenty of power left in reserve) at the same speed a lot of Grand Banks and others will achieve at WOT with the dog pushing on the swim platform.

Not saying speed is good or bad, it's just different. Just as not having adequate range forces different cruising decisions, not having choice of going fast forces different decisions and ergo cruising lifestyle.

 

[rslifkin]

Not saying speed is good or bad, it's just different. Just as not having adequate range forces different cruising decisions, not having choice of going fast forces different decisions and ergo cruising lifestyle.

Very true. I'd say for the most part, even faster trawlers don't really let you go fast to keep a tighter schedule outside of certain situations. They're just not good enough at going fast for it to make any sense to do it for long, nor are they fast enough for the extra speed to be worth the fuel burn for more than short bursts.

 

[Art]

Very true. I'd say for the most part, even faster trawlers don't really let you go fast to keep a tighter schedule outside of certain situations. They're just not good enough at going fast for it to make any sense to do it for long, nor are they fast enough for the extra speed to be worth the fuel burn for more than short bursts.

Trawler this, Trawler that! Unless they are a working "Trawler"... they all are otherwise just "pleasure boats"!

IMHO cruising slow [6 to 7 knots] is truly a pleasant event. An event we often enjoy on our Tolly with hard chine planing hull. At slow speed [about 1/2 mile per hour below calced hull speed of 7.58 knots] our planing hull has its twin screws turning slow, with engines loping along at low rpm and getting pretty good mileage - i.e. 2 + nmpg [not quite as good as a full displacement hull with small engine - but not too far off].

Then we come to capability of get up n' go... regarding rslifkin's Chris, our Tolly and many other boats on TF!! Yup - Our planing boats can cruise easily at 16 to 17 knots and handle really good, on plane, at that speed. Therein we compromise $$$ spent [1 nmpg] compared to travel-time taken [over twice as fast arrival at destination]. And, if some "need" arises we can push the levers to WOT and clip along at 22 to 23 knots.

There is limited comparison of water-travel-effects during a cruise; in relation to FD and P hull shapes. Each to their own!

 

[psneeld]

For at least 50 years everyone I know in the boating "know" has been calling Grand Banks, Albins, Marine Traders, etc, etc and all look alikes...... trawlers.

How in just the last few years.....have some TFers and maybe others decided that it has become complicated?

Sure there are some "maybe, maybe nots" ...but the vast majority of people I talk to (including long term brokers and well known boaters from all over the US) get it.... as it has been said over and over by some...I know one when I see it (not necessarily the specs).

 

[mvweebles]

When you don't have the choice of powering-up to make a bridge opening or have to make overnight passages to make a favorable tide or ensure you cruise in daylight hours only, it changes your boating - a lot. To my thinking, it greatly expands my horizons which is why Nordhavn is so successful.

Its not just about going slow to save money or smell the roses. There is a lifestyle and enhanced emphasis on seamanship skills such as route planning, spares, provisioning, standing watch, and weather forecasting that go along with passagemaking in a displacement boat. You can tinker with these in a 18-kt boat and emulate the experience, but in the end, you have a choice. When your spouse decides they just want to get there, that it's only money, it's a choice. With a displacement boat, you are much more committed to the elements and plan accordingly.

I clearly come down on life at jogging speed. But the above is not a knock on choices for faster boats. But to say they are the same just because a fast boat can go slow is akin to saying an Porsche is fine as a daily driver because it can go 30mph when needed.

 

[Barrie]

Definition of a trawler.
"A slow boat with square windows"

 

[SteveK]

Bought me a GB and went looking for like minded forums.
Searched for GB Forums and #1 was
Grand Banks - Trawler Forum
www.trawlerforum.com › Home › Trawler Builders Forums
Grand Banks - In 1962 Kenneth Smith was commissioned to design Spray, a 36-foot diesel powered cruiser. A year later work started on a line of boats.
Now you guys are saying I ended up on a shrimp boat forum.

 

[Nomad Willy]

I will risk my own definition.
A trawler is a slow boat, fuel conservative, with great living area, handled by an old bloke loving the freedom of cruising and being at sea... and of course eating any penny you may still have in your pocket

L

Hey Lou,
Sounds good so I can (as usual) agree w Art but how can you call trawlers fuel efficient? They burn a lot of fuel per pound or per mile traveled. Sailboats only burn about 1/3 as much. But they don’t have any illusions about our-running weather.

 

[Art]

When you don't have the choice of powering-up to make a bridge opening or have to make overnight passages to make a favorable tide or ensure you cruise in daylight hours only, it changes your boating - a lot. To my thinking, it greatly expands my horizons which is why Nordhavn is so successful.

Its not just about going slow to save money or smell the roses. There is a lifestyle and enhanced emphasis on seamanship skills such as route planning, spares, provisioning, standing watch, and weather forecasting that go along with passagemaking in a displacement boat. You can tinker with these in a 18-kt boat and emulate the experience, but in the end, you have a choice. When your spouse decides they just want to get there, that it's only money, it's a choice. With a displacement boat, you are much more committed to the elements and plan accordingly.

I clearly come down on life at jogging speed. But the above is not a knock on choices for faster boats. But to say they are the same just because a fast boat can go slow is akin to saying an Porsche is fine as a daily driver because it can go 30mph when needed.

At end of my post #98 - I believe what I intoned is very similar to what is in bold at end of your quote above... My quote: "There is limited comparison of water-travel-effects during a cruise; in relation to FD and P hull shapes. Each to their own!"

 

[psneeld]

I can not in my wildest dreams think that speed makes one a more seamanlike captain or not.

What one does with a boat to a degree, but speed?

I could say it could go either way but mostly think, no it doesn't really mean a thing. The boats capability and the speed one travels are often 2 different things.

Skills required to go slow are often about time as much as speed..sure if in a boat with fewer options one is forced to cruise a certain way, but those skills aren't always foreign to skipper s who are for the moment driving a faster boat.

 

[syjos]

.

I clearly come down on life at jogging speed. But the above is not a knock on choices for faster boats. But to say they are the same just because a fast boat can go slow is akin to saying an Porsche is fine as a daily driver because it can go 30mph when needed.

I like the Porche analogy.

 

[rslifkin]

I wouldn't say speed makes for better or worse seamanship. Good seamanship would involve knowing what your boat can do and planning to make the most effective use of that.

If you're looking for a passagemaker, it's going to be a slow boat, or at best a slow boat with limited ability to go a little (but not a lot) faster sometimes (but only when range isn't a concern). Building a fast boat with enough range and self sufficiency is just not going to happen.

But within the realm of coastal cruising, there's not a whole lot of difference in capability between a slow boat that can push a bit faster at times vs a true slow boat. Planning for stuff like bridge timing, etc. will be a little different between the 2, but I'd say the overall travel time for most trips will be pretty similar.

 

[mvweebles]

I wouldn't say speed makes for better or worse seamanship. Good seamanship would involve knowing what your boat can do and planning to make the most effective use of that.

If you're looking for a passagemaker, it's going to be a slow boat, or at best a slow boat with limited ability to go a little (but not a lot) faster sometimes (but only when range isn't a concern). Building a fast boat with enough range and self sufficiency is just not going to happen.

But within the realm of coastal cruising, there's not a whole lot of difference in capability between a slow boat that can push a bit faster at times vs a true slow boat. Planning for stuff like bridge timing, etc. will be a little different between the 2, but I'd say the overall travel time for most trips will be pretty similar.

I didn't mean to imply anything other than a forced slow boat breeds a different boating lifestyle and skillset for cruising. Transiting the west coast at 7-kts requires much different weather skills than even 10-kts where you can do daylight trips if desired (I don't, but many prefer daylight only runs). Call it trawlering. Call it dawdling. Call it passagemaking. But it's different in a displacement boat. Personally, this lifestyle when used for extended cruising is the essence of trawlering. I think that came out loud and clear in Beebes book even though he also wanted to do the French canals.

 

[mahal]

If anyone says "I'm going to my yacht" and the yacht is less than 75 feet or so, I would assume that the person has a really small pee pee.

Size doesn’t matter. It could be 150’, and I would still assume that his outboard or Johnson or dinghy is undersized.

 

[O C Diver]

A trawler is a slow speed cruising power boat, that you will easily recognize from its salty rugged good looks, and won't be confused with the rest of the seemingly high speed, fair weather, Clorox bottles tied to the dock.

Ted

 

[Northern Spy]

When someone asks how fast your boat is, you tell them, and they reply "Is that all?"; you might have a trawler.

 

[OldDan1943]

When someone asks how fast your boat is, you tell them, and they reply "Is that all?"; you might have a trawler.

Really really fast down the back side of a big, mean wave.

 

[Bob Noodat]

Lexicographical expansion

By what authority is the word "motor" only supposed to be concerned with electric motors, and the word "engine" used in reference to gasoline, and Diesel reciprocating engines, and also for turbine engines?

"Motor" has been associated with "outboard motors" and "Motor Boats" for generations.

A friend (outside my boating interests) recently called attention to this same motor/engine thing and I did not understand where it comes from.

I cannot help chiming in, to support you.



Motor and engine are often used interchangeably in english, but their respective origins are instructive: motor is anything providing motive power, including arms, legs, wings and fins, or oars or petrol engines or electric motors. The word engine on the other hand dates from the European Enlightenment, the birth of science, when wonderfully complex devices of human artifice were becoming widespread. The French still use the word "génie" equivalent to our "genius" for the design and construction of such devices, in other words for engineering, also of the same origin. Incidentally, this génie does not have to involve movement or propulsive power, and even in english we find the term civil engineering used for static constructions of complexity.


To come back to the present question, both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine are motors. It is more common in British english to call an engine a motor, viz. motor boat, motor car. I believe that the use of the terminology "electric motor" rather than "electric engine" is purely an alliterative one. by that I mean that "electric engine" with two words starting with an e, sounds a trifle awkward.


Back to my ivory tower.

 

[Art]

I cannot help chiming in, to support you.



Motor and engine are often used interchangeably in english, but their respective origins are instructive: motor is anything providing motive power, including arms, legs, wings and fins, or oars or petrol engines or electric motors. The word engine on the other hand dates from the European Enlightenment, the birth of science, when wonderfully complex devices of human artifice were becoming widespread. The French still use the word "génie" equivalent to our "genius" for the design and construction of such devices, in other words for engineering, also of the same origin. Incidentally, this génie does not have to involve movement or propulsive power, and even in english we find the term civil engineering used for static constructions of complexity.


To come back to the present question, both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine are motors. It is more common in British english to call an engine a motor, viz. motor boat, motor car. I believe that the use of the terminology "electric motor" rather than "electric engine" is purely an alliterative one. by that I mean that "electric engine" with two words starting with an e, sounds a trifle awkward.


Back to my ivory tower.

Wow - Bob - For a first post that is a goodly instructive one!

Welcome!

Art

 

[Nomad Willy]

A trawler is a slow speed cruising power boat, that you will easily recognize from its salty rugged good looks, and won't be confused with the rest of the seemingly high speed, fair weather, Clorox bottles tied to the dock.

Ted

Ted,
The way you used the word and expression “Clorox bottles” it occured to me that many trawlers that fit in. You can tell the’re plastic 1000 yards away. The hull is less often revealing but the house is most often reveals the material. I’m not going to mention brands or boats as I would instantly make hundreds of enemies.

Most all trawlers are plastic. Some try hard to keep their product not looking like a plastic jug of some sort by giving the cabin or hull surface a wood texture or tiny grooves that look like plank seams. But most make no effort to that end assuming (correctly IMO) that people are quite used to buying plastic things that look like plastic. It’s so hard to do I think most manufacturers choose price line over plastic look. So plastic boats most always look like plastic. But to your credit Ted higher speed cruisers more often look like plastic ... IMO.

 

[Art]

Ted,
The way you used the word and expression “Clorox bottles” it occured to me that many trawlers that fit in. You can tell the’re plastic 1000 yards away. The hull is less often revealing but the house is most often reveals the material. I’m not going to mention brands or boats as I would instantly make hundreds of enemies.

Most all trawlers are plastic. Some try hard to keep their product not looking like a plastic jug of some sort by giving the cabin or hull surface a wood texture or tiny grooves that look like plank seams. But most make no effort to that end assuming (correctly IMO) that people are quite used to buying plastic things that look like plastic. It’s so hard to do I think most manufacturers choose price line over plastic look. So plastic boats most always look like plastic. But to your credit Ted higher speed cruisers more often look like plastic ... IMO.

Wood is wood... not toothpicks nor just pulp. Fiberglass is fiberglass... not a clorox bottle nor just plastic].

Both are great single entity building materials as well as combination building materials.

Each has its high points and its low points.

For owners of items made with either material to condemn the other material or to speak poorly about owners of the other material is simply knowledgeable or unfeeling and at very least not well mannered - at all.

Having worked on or with, and having owned both materials in marine settings, I can say that both materials are wonderful. Wood requires more efforts in general; fiberglass needs its share too.

 

[CapeWhaler]

To continue beating it to death (common usage aside) I was told in an EE course (in 1961, I should add) that an 'engine' creates its work output strictly internally, while a 'motor' requires an external energy input to generate useful work, e.g. electricity. As a point of supportive trivia, railroaders used to refer to electric powered locomotives as 'motors,' while steam and diesels were 'engines.' Apparently that stuck somewhere in my mind...(but I still call them outboard motors).

And re 'Clorox bottles,' I love wooden boats, subscribe to the eponymously named magazine, and wish I had the time and skills to take care of one, but all my boats have been GRP for ease of maintenance. In any case, both types have their attractions and they both take money and effort.
Joe

 

[Nomad Willy]

CapeWhaler,
Spot on. I forgot the details. Motors have external power source so the power is created externally.

But folks calling outboard engines outboard motors is considered propper venacular language however incorrect it is. I always call outboards outboard motors but never refer to my engine in by inboard boat as a motor.

 

[Northern Spy]

Date wood. Marry fibreglass.

 

[Art]

I can't hear you, shut off your boat motor!