Eric,
I'm here to talk trawlers and learn from you all and that will always be my reason for hanging out here! Truth be told, I do two things...I own a commercial real estate company (which is what makes me be able to afford to be a boater myself!) and yes, I am a yacht broker too and doing pretty darn good at it as well but shhh....that's our secret that I'm a broker! Boats are my passion and I guess I like selling things on land and sea. *
I think it depends on which diesel engines we are talking about. *If some Detroit Diesels, then yes, the noise is a major factor! *I've got a little 135hp perkins in our Monk and that thing is as about as quiet as a mouse. *Ok, maybe not THAT quiet, but pretty darn quiet for a diesel....not terribly louder than the twin 8.1 HO Crusaders I had in our Silverton. *Up on the bridge you really can't hear our engine at all and unless at too low of an RPM at idle, it's not bad in salon whether at idle or beyond. *Here's a vid from our flybridge:
And from our salon:
Both were taking @ about 7.5 knots and the noise you here from the bridge video is the sound of water, not an engine.
No doubt diesels are typically a good bit louder and rumblier but if you drive the same model one with gasers, the other with diesels, performance will just about always favor the diesels, unless you want an absolute quiet ride and no odor (gotta love that ODORLESS Carbon Monoxide!!).
Personally though, I think the writing is on the wall that gas engines in large boats is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen as we bring more E10 and soon E15 online, fuel prices climb, etc. *Gasers have their place and serve their purpose (i.e. great lake boats and I sell a lot of those type of larger lake boats in the 38-50' range) but 9 times out of 10, IMO, diesels win hands down. *I know I have no intention of ever owning a large gas powered boat again but that is just me! *I think Baker said it earlier...you can feel gas engines cringe at the thought of working hard while diesels want to go and go and go harder still.
From an economic standpoint give me 2 identical models of same age and equipment except one gas and one diesel and the diesel powered one will sell before the gaser 9.9 times out of 10 and that is a fact. *Exception to this would be large boats that are most often gas powered, say like the carver 406 aft cabin, or the sea ray 38 sundancer, etc. *I like to be model specific and the Tolly 43 is a 30,000 lb boat per specs, surely more after gear, fuel, and water. *That is a LOT of weight to push around with gas engines.
P.S. Only 3 tollycraft *43 sales in all of 2010- would you like to guess how many of those were gas powered? *
(that would be zero!)
-- Edited by Woodsong on Sunday 19th of December 2010 10:57:27 PM