Heavens To Betty...The Fuel Thing

A weekend or so ago, I fell to talkin' with a couple of our neighbors at the marina, Russell and Lee, in the way that boaters do, and have been doing for hundreds of years perhaps...cockpit to cockpit. Russell and Lee own a Nordic Tug (as you can see here) with a cool, rather tug-like name: Alice Lee. She's a beaut, and comparatively new although she's got a whole pile of lovely miles on her.

Anyway, Russell says, "Yeah, it looks to me like there aren't that many people going out these days, I guess because of the fuel situation. People are just stayin' on their boats in the marina on the weekends."

Now what Russell was referring to here is the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel and the plummeting level of actual boat usage that seems to result from it in our marina as well as other marinas across the land. I agreed with him, of course.

"Yeah," Russell continued (that's him waving from his darkened wheelhouse while pulling out of his slip to go off on a moderst little afternoon jaunt), "It's not slowin' Lee and I down that much, though. We're burnin' about three gallons an hour, or thereabouts I think. Not too bad. Not too bad at all."

"Yup," added Lee (that's her waving from the cockpit...with the stylish straw hat and the happy-to-be-going-boating smile on her face), "We've decided to use our boat as much as possible this summer. Life's too short not to. That's how we see it. We're off to Shell Island as a matter of fact."

Certainly, the conversation with Russell and Lee warmed the cockles of my little ol' heart. After all, one of the reasons I purchased my very own turtle-slow but wonderfully economical Grand Banks 32 was the whole issue of fuel. Even four years ago, it seemed to me that some hard times were a'comin', as they say. And it also seemed that a sightseeing-type fuel burn of 1.5 gph (that's Betty's consumption at 1,750 rpm, a rate that produces a cruise speed of approximately 8 knots) might eventually come in real handy.

Now, I know. Nobody in his right mind today wants to hear from some super-fortunate son-of-a-gun (feel free to substitute other, more satisfying words for this last one if you're so inclined) who for one reason or another happens to currently own a comparatively cheap-to-operate motorboat, especially when the tab for go-go juice is blasting bullet holes through the roof of the wheelhouse.

"So that's just wonderful, Billy Boy," I can hear somebody say, "So you got an economical little trawler, eh? Well, whooooop-tee-dooooooo for you. I'm just tickled pink about how lucky you are. Say...why don't you take a long walk off the nearest short pier!"

But listen. Could it be that economical, single-engine vessels like the Alice Lee and the Betty Jane are the next new thing? Could it be that the need for speed's fading from the scene, at least until some whopping mechano-electro-nano-geekster genius comes up with a propulsion system that transcends the pricey drawbacks of internal combustion?

As for me and Betty? Believe it or not, I am starting (and I mean: starting) to think along the lines of retrofitting my old-fashioned trawler with a heavenly new-fashioned powerplant of some sort (You can read about this extravaganza in one of my upcoming At Sea columns in Power & Motoryacht). Maybe a hydrogen fuel cell. Maybe a Starship Enterprise warp drive.

Who knows! I just hope my ol' dead-simple, low-tech Super Lehman doesn't find out what I'm up to!