New member on Puget Sound

[joreyn]

We purchased Blue Moon this spring and after a couple of months outfitting and polishing her gel coat, had our first extended cruise last week. It's a great boat. Our former boat was a 32 Grand Banks Woodie. Blue Moon is far more maneuverable, comfortable and quiet.

We had a great time on her up in the Gulf Islands in Canada. Lot's of admiring glances from other boaters.

[jcollins]

Great looking boat. Welcome to the group.

[Mariner]

Nice looking boat. I take it by the side exhaust exits that you have the twins. I would love to see some speed and fuel consumption figures at some point.

One word of advice; watch out for those side air inlets. I've heard that people have had problems with water coming in when in big water. Ours has the intakes on the inside of the gunnels, which I feel is much safer. It's a modification that might even be worth making yourself.

We've also found that our boat gets lots of attention. I'm currently sitting in Roche Harbor waiting out the weather, and although last night was too rainy for people to be out wandering the docks, the night before, I had three different sets of people come up and ask about the boat, one of which was very interested in buying one. We hardly go anywhere without someone commenting on the boat. It's actually pretty amusing.

[joreyn]

Yes I have twins. Actually, the air intakes are inboard in the cockpit. What you are seeing is a decorative panel that covers where the intakes were placed initially.

I have fuel consumption data which I am somewhat confident of. I developed it using Caterpillar specs, and then confirmed the speed and RPM data at sea. When I have a chance, I'll post a chart. But basically The range is from about 1.7 NMPG at 1400 RPM making 8.5 NMH (5 GPH) to .6 nmpg at 2800 RPM making 22 knots (36 GPH).

It's definitely a fuel hog at the high end. but around 1800 to 2200 RPM I make 10 to 15 knots at about 1 mile per gallon. Once you have the two turbos kicked in, though, the giant sucking sound commences.

Last week I put about 17 hours on up in the Gulf Ilsands, and put 110 gallons in to fill it up. So about 6.7 GPH across a variety of cruising scenarios.

[joreyn]

Mariner, will you be cruising over the labor day weekend?

[Mariner]

Unfortunately probably not. We just got back from a week in the San Juans, and I have a wedding to go to on Saturday, and a concert at the Gorge to go to on Sunday, so we will be stuck on land all weekend. It's possible, though unlikely, however, that my parents may take the boat out this weekend. They are not active on the website, though they are members.

So, were the air intakes moved inside by the previous owners, or was that a modification made by Albin? Ours has nothing on the side of the hull at all. And what motors do you have?

If you search around a little bit, you will see that I've posted fuel and speed curves for our boat (though I'm not sure I remember where). At 1,400 rpm, we go about 7.4 knots, so about a knot slower, but burn only 4gph. That makes 1.85gph. In order to go 8.5 knots, I've got ot kick it up to about 1,600 or 1,700 rpm (depending on conditions), which kicks my fuel burn up to 6 gph. So, not quite as efficient as you at that speed.

To make 15 knots, I've got to kick up to 2,700 rpm and use 20-24gph (.75nm/g or less). But to be honest, I haven't seen 15 knots very often since we bought it. Once we got the boat all loaded up with our gear and equipment, it's been hard to get over 14, even with the throttles wide open.

I haven't topped off the tank since our trip last week, but we ran at a wide variety of speeds, so it will be hard to get much useful data out of the numbers when I do. We're fortunate in that the Caterpillar display gives real-time gph.

[joreyn]

I think that they were placed there by Albin. The covers have a bit of custom design incorporating the Albin logo. I had thought that the openings might have been in the mold, or possibly they had pulled a certain number of hulls and cut in the opening before they made the design change. The covers are actually kind of cool looking - like a molded in logo.

[Mariner]

Well, there weren't very many of these boats made, so I'm inclined to think that they probably either had the holes incorporated into the mold, or had already cut them, like you said.

With the twins, where are your fuel tanks? Are they all the way forward of the bulkhead between the engine and center compartments? Ours span the two compartments, coming back to about the aft end of the engine, and extending to the forward end of the center compartment, outboard of the engine on both sides, about 180 gallons each. Then there is a smaller tank on the center line (about 30 gallons) aft of the engine, right where you crawl into the engine room through the hatch on the aft seat, into which both tanks feed, and from which the engine actually draws it's fuel.

[joreyn]

The are two 150 Gallon tanks forward of the bulkhead, and an 80 gallon "day tank" also forward. Also the water tank is 150 gallons. The boat is well balanced with this weight forward.