What do you think the cost of sailing 15000 miles is in a catamaran vs an up to 60feet trawler

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Foilmagnet

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The setup in the Trawler will be single engine with a get home.
Speed max 9knots but trawling at 6 knots
Engine will hopefully be a gardner or lugger v6. Get home.... What ever there is in it
Full displacement hull.
size from 46 feet to max 60 in the trawler I know it is wish full thinking to find a v6 gardner in a 60feet trawler. Well in almost any boat from after 1998.
Age no more than 25 years of the trawler
The cat will be a sail cat. min 40 feet and max 47 feet.
Age no more than 20 years of the sailcat.

Both used in hmmm ready to sail shape. What ever that means.
 
I am not so much thinking in fuel cost but service and repair cost. I have a feeling from all i read and seen that a sailboat is way more expensive in the long run. But i am often wrong so why not now
 
Never been a sailor, but I would think the costs would be similar depending on where you plan to cruise. In the PNW the sailboats I see are mostly motoring, so costs would be the same. If somewhere that you can mostly sail, then you will be using those sheet thingamabobs, so those would be the wear items vs mechanical's. I don't know those costs. Your true cost will depend on your capabilities.
 
Hard to say because rarely will you find a trawler that is not equipped with a lot more creature comforts that are expensive to fix. Similarly equipped and no fuel considerations, the trawler wins hands down because it only has one rugged propulsion system and the sailboat has one rugged and one more vulnerable to the elements.
 
Think you need to narrow your trawler boat selection. My 45' trawler would cruise at 6 knots at 5 MPG. 7 knots was 3.5 MPG. 8 knots was under 2MPG. And it wouldn't reach 9 knots with the 135 HP John Deere. The displacement on a 60' trawler would be more than double and require a bigger motor than you're anticipating to reach 9 knots.

Assuming a 2 MPG cruise for 15,000 miles equals 7,500 gallons. Assuming $5 per gallon, that equals $37,500. I would expect to do better, but that's a SWAG. Now all you need is the half million plus plus plus to buy the boat.

Ted
 
With a trawler you have three real expenses. Fuel, engine depletion and boat depreciation. Most likely you won’t need to rebuild the engines meaning you will most likely only need to deal with boat depreciation.

With the cat you will have two real expenses. Sails depletion and boat depreciation.

The depreciation cost is going to favor the lower capitalized boat. Meaning which ever boat costs you less to purchase and outfit will have the lowest depreciation cost.

This leaves us comparing fuel to sails. An impossible task without knowing your intended duration and distance. Shorter duration longer distance favors the sails. The opposite favors fuel.
 
Here are some real world numbers from folks who have significant passages on sail and power. Bottom line is the long term costs are roughly the same. Sure, there are scenarios where Sail can be a lot cheaper, but for the most part, you chose sail because you love to sail, not because it's cheaper.


I cannot find the link, but Steve Dashew have a gazillion open ocean miles on both sail and power. They summarize the costs are a wash when you factor in sails, rigging, etc.

I hope I get this right, but TF'er LarryM circumnavigated under sail, and they did a very long run through the Panama Canal on a KK42. His costs were roughly the same.

Good luck with whatever you decide -

Peter
 
With a trawler you have three real expenses. Fuel, engine depletion and boat depreciation. Most likely you won’t need to rebuild the engines meaning you will most likely only need to deal with boat depreciation.

With the cat you will have two real expenses. Sails depletion and boat depreciation.

The depreciation cost is going to favor the lower capitalized boat. Meaning which ever boat costs you less to purchase and outfit will have the lowest depreciation cost.

This leaves us comparing fuel to sails. An impossible task without knowing your intended duration and distance. Shorter duration longer distance favors the sails. The opposite favors fuel.
For the cat you will also have engine dépréciation, if you double look at the engine hour on the cat for sale you will be surprises.And you have also the rigging (running and standing one)we do the balance when we built our Long-Cours 62 24 year ago...and we décide to stay à 'motor boat' and don't fit the rigging to became à motor sailor.
 

With the Long-Cours62" at 6.6kts our consumption was 0.61lt per nm
it means around 6.2 nm per us gallon.
for 15000nm 9150 lt or 2417 gallons ( someone said 5$us per gallon) 12085$us.
If the catamaran will be sold with sails in good shape you don't need to buy new one for 15000nm
For example a main sail for a Lagoon 45 (81m2) could be ( probably Chinese maker )around 9700€ or 10789$us...
 
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