Reality of maintaining boat / minimal chartering?

Things can be kept up while on the hard. But I'd be more inclined to go with either the limited charter route or have a qualified and vetted captain take care of it in your absence. Especially one who can move it to a safe/safer location in the event of a hurricane.

Agree with Captain Bill's points, in particular finding a captain who can look after the boat, and if needed, move her if and as needed.

This is essentially what we are doing now with our 59 down in the Carib. until she heads into the Great Lakes in the next few weeks.

Bahamas

Be sure you can summer the boat in the Bahamas under your insurance coverage, also, if chartering, you will have many more issues to worry about.

We put our Hatteras on the hard (in Florida) for summer and have it shrink wrapped, works great for 3 yrs so far.

Charter is as hard a life as a boat gets. Go with a cap to watch her and establish what you want done, and not done. A client of mine just picked up a boat with Yanmars, From what I read the worst thing that can happen to these is to sit idle. So I'll take her out for about an hour of idling and a couple of minutes on plane, any week the owner doesn't. It's not my boat and it's not playtime. So that's it. Interview though, don't just hire someone and give him your keys.

I totally agree with NYCAP, do not trust someone that u don't know. You should interview though and ask for past experiences and/or references.

I don't want to divert from the original topic but I'd like to know why in particular Yanmars damage more from sitting idle than other engines. Maybe a link you can refer me to?

After reading this thread: http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/t...-6ly2a-stp-440-problems.html?highlight=Yanmar
I did some investigating. There are several links about aluminum engines, but this explains well. http://www.yachtsurvey.com/diesel_engines.htm.
The word I got is that you can get a normal diesel life span in continuous use, but the problems with aluminum engines comes when the are allowed to sit and loose the oil coatings and the dissimilar metals react to each other. The recommendation I got is to make sure they're run for a bit every week to make sure everything stays oiled.

I'm not really convinced. Apart from the fact that I've read some articles from Pascoe where he makes absolute incorrect statements I guess that replacing your alu heat exchanger anodes should prevent serious damage caused by galv. corrosion. And does losing an oil coating promote dissimilar metals to react with eachother. I'm not challenging your knowledge, just want to learn more.

While I don't disagree that dissimilar metals can and do have a negative effect in particular scenarios, if that were the case in the above cited article, then the automotive industry and its application of steel blocks with aluminum heads, pistons, intake manifolds, and other top end / bolt on parts (water pumps, carburetors, throttle bodies, fuel rails, etc.) has some serious issues upcoming and should start their retooling efforts now.

All of these parts are usually seperated by gaskets of an inert material such as graphite. Aluminum heads for example are not touching the steel, nor is the intake manifold touching.

Any marine engine dies a shorter death sitting. Aside from the oil's dripping off of all of the parts, which isn't the worst part of it. You have saltwater flushing in and out of the wet exhaust as the boat rocks, pushing condensation up into the exhaust manifolds, and into cylinders where the valves are open. This is the biggest problem. On Yanmars, since they are aluminum, once the raw water evaporates or drains out of the seawater passages, you then have raw salt and air eating the aluminum alive. The Yanmar aluminum is Japanese and doesn't have the corrossion resistant properties like Mercury's and OMC's have. Just like you'll see a lot more corrossion related issues (like cylinder heads leaking) on Yamaha outboards versus domestics. If you ran them every 2 weeks, they'd probably be fine.


A few years back, we had to replace the exhaust from the Turbo's back on a 2 year old Azimut with 100 hours. It was directly on the ICW and it rocked a lot, and the exhaust was rotted through in places, the CAT Turbo's also had a lot of corrossion in them but were ok at that point.

I have seen a lot of people in the Bahamas (bahamians) that were supposed to be taking care of a yacht, and not doing what they're supposed to be doing. If given the chance, they will slack off and only wash the boat right before you come for example. I'd look for a US Captain to oversee the boat. I also would not recommend leaving it on the hard, as you'll have an interior covered in Mold with the humidity and summer temps. It's easy enough to run the boat back to the US, if you're going to be gone for months at a time. The dockage savings would probably cover the fuel.

I'm no engineer. I'm a guy who's been around diesel motors a long time and picked up some knowledge along the way. All I know is what I read and hear others (who know far more than me) say. I do know Yanmars by reputation and personal experience, and I love them in the appropriate application. I've found that the're fast and ecconomical to operate. I ran a 43 Ocean SF from NY-Fl 5 times including once being the fastest I ever did the coast. We averaged 29 kts. and burned 23gph. They can run all day, all night and love it. They're used in the Oldport launches and water taxis that do continual service and are dependable. What I've heard is that they don't lend themselves to rebuilds. But they cost about 1/2 what a CAT does and they don't leak/burn as much oil from my experience. Then I heard about motors going bad at 700 hrs. and I found what I found. Keeping the metals lubricated didn't sound like a bad idea to me. Moisture and oxidation could be part of the problem as well. I know that on the outside they have a tendency to rust and not hold paint well.

It is true that a lot of Yanmars cannot be rebuilt because a lot of their blocks do not have sleeves.