Boating & Gas Prices

Paulkarlsven said:
:smt043:smt043Are you in the market for bodie parts Bill?:smt043:smt043
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Remember that movie AMERICAN GANGSTER?? with Denzel Washington??

When ever he wanted to stay cool with someone who wanted to bump him off if he agreed with someone he would say MY MAN...:thumbsup:

Loved that movie...
 
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Mine is being used regardless. Either way it costs me money, with the slip, insurance, etc. Might as well suck it up and go out and have fun. The new fuel flow meter will be worth its weight in gold though. :thumbsup:
 
I have already started to run my motorcycle to save on gas driving back and forth to work. Suburban right now is costing me 145 a week, bike 35. That is 110 to start banking for the summer. Round trip to work 104 miles, 5 days a week. Need to find a job closer to home. I wish they would give seniors discount on gas
 
We will go out no matter the cost, but we may just go slower, or just float around more, but we are getting on the water!
 
With my youngest daughter is getting married in August there will be no 7 weeks to the North Channel this year, if not for that we would be there. I budget so much for fuel and spend that much, sure wish I could do that with the wedding. A wedding dress is worth almost 5 tanks of gas for less than 12 hours use. Back to boating.... about 4 years ago fuel was $1.69 a liter (6.42 a gallon) in Killarney you could fire a cannon off and not hit anyone, this year will be worse. There were a number of boat manufactures that went under in the last 3 or 4 years, this past summer was better but with the economy and the predicted fuel prices it's not going to be pretty. The other factor that is going to hurt is the US dollar, it is not expected to rise above the Canadian dollar this year. I heard today that the Canadian dollar will close out the year at 1.05 or higher. Won't see the US boats coming to Canada like we did last year.

Ken
 
We are all in this game up to our eyeballs ! Cant just leave her in the driveway as a planter, and selling in this market is not an option. Besides.....I just finished restoring her. This is what we love to do, so we will all find a way to make it work, weather its a shorter trip, a slower speed, al little more time spent just chilling on the hook or a few days at the dock with friends. Lets talk about the positive sides of boating. Actually, my boat is better on fuel than my cooler is on beer. What I need is a more economical cooler!!! There will still be a lot of people on the shore looking out at us saying........boy, wish I could be doing that. Remember when that was us..................

I'M ALL IN. C,mon summer!
 
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We'll just use the vacation money to fuel the boat. That's what we did last time gas hit these high numbers. We spent the whole week on the boat and around the house. We went out every night for dinner but the hotel dollars all went in the boat. I guess the hotels and resorts will take a hit. I'd rather travel on the boat anyways, Mike.
 
I do not understand the going slower logic.

Anchoring vs moving, I agree with.

As long as I am not going close to or at wide open, going about 25MPH to about 35MPH results in about the same fuel burn per distance traveled in our boat.

Go under about 20 and fuel usage goes way up…..all the way down to about 5 or 6 MPH.

I’m not convinced 5MPH passage making is economical when engine hour increase is taken into consideration.

Diesel luger in a trawler, sure. Gas engines in a boat engineered to plane? Not so much.
 
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I Just got the list of open dock spaces at my marina. There is 3x the amount of open slips avail before the season starts and thats before they start asking last years rental people if they are staying.
one Positive, I was able to move to a better & cheaper spot. JG
 
Stop whining guys! :grin:

I warmly welcome you to experience boating in my country these days. We are paying EUR 6.15 per gallon which equals US$ 8.45 on today's exchange rate. :smt089
 
Gone Boating said:
Mine is being used regardless. Either way it costs me money, with the slip, insurance, etc. Might as well suck it up and go out and have fun. The new fuel flow meter will be worth its weight in gold though. :thumbsup:
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How does F.F.M. that actually work????

installation expertise???
 
When we moved up from our 175 to a 280DA, we knew what we were getting into...5x the fuel burn rate for the same trips. So at the start of this year, we opened up a seperate bank account for just boat fuel and maintenance costs.

I put together a little spreadsheet where I input the savings start date, the season ending date, the number of hours we'll plan to use the boat, along with the fuel price. Out comes the amount we have to put away in the bank account every two weeks starting at the beginning of the year to get us through to the end of the boating season. The only issue is that I haven't accounted for my fuel prices being so far off to start with! But hopefully this will allow us to now have to worry about taking the boat out on a weekend or not. We should be able to use it as we normally would.

Tom
 
I think the best thing to do with boating not to count the cost... :smt038It will never make sense economically to have a boat... :smt089We will use our boat, make our annual CSR trip to AC. Hang out with the gang at local raft ups, but we not make a long trip this year if the prices don't drop... We may use our small boat more; it gets 5 MPG, :thumbsup: as compared to .8 for the big boat... So my recommendation, to all you concerned with gas prices is, buy a second smaller boat for and it will pay for itself with the gas savings... :smt101
 
rcknecht said:
i think the best thing to do with boating not to count the cost... :smt038it will never make sense economically to have a boat... :smt089we will use our boat, make our annual csr trip to ac. Hang out with the gang at local raft ups, but we not make a long trip this year if the prices don't drop... We may use our small boat more; it gets 5 mpg, :thumbsup: As compared to .8 for the big boat... So my recommendation, to all you concerned with gas prices is, buy a second smaller boat for and it will pay for itself with the gas savings... :smt101
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my thought exactly..how small is small..??

Maybe a 16 footer???
 
Three years ago 1/2 tank cost me 960.00.I told the wife at 4.85 a gallon it's time to slow down.A 40.00 lunch across the bay ended up costing 240.00.:smt009
 
billnpat said:
my thought exactly..how small is small..??

Maybe a 16 footer???
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Small is relative... for me it needs to be small enough to be gas efficient, big enough to use and not get swamped, and must be able to pull a skier.... We love our 190 sundeck... (our dingy)
 
rcknecht said:
Small is relative... for me it needs to be small enough to be gas efficient, big enough to use and not get swamped, and must be able to pull a skier.... We love our 190 sundeck... (our dingy)[/QUOT

190 sundeck??

i'll look tomorrow at the L.I. NY boat show...:thumbsup:
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I will echo what I have heard a few others say...

This is our second year as a family boating, so WE WILL BE ON THE WATER NO MATTER WHAT! Life is indeed too short and we will be making a lifetime of family memories this season. I can't put a price tag on the smiles my girls have when we get on board.

That said, being on a lake and having a 25' w/ a 57 gallon tank helps. The Big Block works against me, but it will be what it will be.
 
Our 330 with twin big blocks and bravo III's would cruise 28 mph @ 1.2 mpg.
Slowing down helps now. Current boat's numbers are about the same as Scott's and Rod's.
A leisurely cruise to Erie, PA from here, (150 miles round trip) leaves about $400 in my wallet, vs a run there at cruise.
Also puts 14 more hours on the clocks, round trip, but half the fun for the two of us is just being underway, playing with the radar, studying charts, cooking and eating breakfast (as long as the lake's not rolling and pitching to much :smt101) Admiral likes to read when we're on our slow cruises, all of the stuff we can't concentrate on when running at cruise speed.
I do my share of running, have to if just going somewhere far for the weekend, but we definitely can save some money by slowing down, if we have the time.
It's not for everybody though, I know several boaters that won't cruise the Erie canal here, because it's "too slow"
 
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