Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Actual MPG for the past 120 miles???

And the numbers are... As follows:
142 miles (nautical miles) as calculated by both my wife the navigator and our carefully calibrated speedometer.
Fuel used 24.2 gallons.
Generator run time less than 3 hours
Engine run time...21.7 hours.
We motored/motor sailed all of these miles with the exception of warm up, maneuvering for traffic and a very small bit of battery charging at a mooring...maybe 45 minutes.
Engine (other than maneuvering around fuel docks and moorings is kept at about 2200 to 2300 rpm's
I am going to allow for 2 gallons of fuel used by the generator. In reality the usage is probably half of that number.
Let's round it off to 21 gallons used for propulsion, just for arguments sake...
We keep the boat speed at about 6 knots when motoring (the sooner we get to where we are headed the sooner we can turn off the motor!

Miles divided by hours says we averaged 6.5 nautical miles per hour...under power.

Remember, 99% of the time we have the main on too. On this run we got 60 plus miles of great low rpm 7plus knots motor sailing in...

I am going to stand on my original statement of about 5 mpg when motoring only at 6 plus knots. We did a little better than 6 mpg on this trip but the time spent at lower rpm's motors ailing was high...

Engine is running like a top, transom is clean, bottom is clean and these are the kind of numbers we have seen from the day the boat was first launched.

Sure I can cut engine speed to 1600 rpm's and almost double my mpg's but we have to get the dogs ashore!

Messages In This Thread