SailNet Community - View Single Post - Sailboats get better gas mileage than you think...+
View Single Post
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 06-26-2007
nolatom nolatom is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: New Orleans
Posts: 1,254
Rep Power: 7
nolatom will become famous soon enough
Sailboats get better gas mileage than you think...+

Okay, I'm teaching sailing off a Beneteau First 7.5. Lots of fun, and pretty responsive for the students. I tend to use the motor (Yamaha 4-hp single cylinder, 4-stroke) as little as possible, but in the light summer air, sometimes we have to. So it seems from experience that the .3 gallon integral tank lasts almost an hour at 5 knots. So that's about 15 miles per gallon, or a little more.

Pretty good for a sailboat with a few students on board. How do we do this? Some cars don't do this well, and they have a lot less resistance going over the road than we do going through the water...

I typically measure this in GPH, but in MPG terms, it's not too bad.

Strange, but true??
Reply With Quote Share with Facebook