The other day I went to the local Z station and filled my wife’s MGZS. It holds 48 litres and with the gauge on almost zero it needed a major top up. After pouring in 45 litres of 95 @ $3.00 a litre ($135) I thought just how much fuel has gone up and how that must effect our boating leisure.
Two years ago when she brought the car new, fuel was around $2.40 in Auckland and around $2.28 in the rest of the country. Same tankage would have cost around $108 in 2020. Okay so not a massive price jump in a small car, but then consider a mate of mine who has a 1050 Everyman with twin Honda 250s. The boat holds 950 litres which today costs him around $3000 to fill at a marina pump.
And there is the big boat owner who has to pump in say 8500 litres into his 65 footer and drop around $27000 onto his credit card. But really that’s insignificant when you consider an 80m superyacht in Auckland would set the owner back over $500.000. So it’s all relative and it gets down to just how much you want to go boating. Interestingly when we have featured the foiling powercats from Carbon Cats and Pachoud Yachts in Pacific PowerBoat one of the things that stood out was their amazing fuel economy at speed. However, 30 knots all the way to Fiji is still going to use a lot of fuel. Although there still seems to be a penchant for bigger monohulls to be able to achieve 28-30 knots, most seem to cruise around a more sedate and certainly far more efficient 18-20 knots.
My Mercury 90 on my McLay 4.8 Fortress maxes out at 32 knots and 33 lph, but I tend to run most of the time at 4500rpm @26 knots and 23 lph. Considering I don’t have to go far to go fishing, a 25-litre tote tank is all I need for a day’s fishing. However, it does make you think and how long it will be before electric outboards are accepted as more mainstream, just as the EV car market is experiencing now.
ALL THE BEST FROM THE PACIFIC POWERBOAT TEAM – BARRY THOMPSON, DOUG DUKESON & ALEX RAM
