Monday 20 June 2011

How many miles do cruisers cruise?

We saw a boat for sale this week with engine hours in excess of 9,500, and discovered that fellow Aussie bloggers, The Manly Ferry also found this interesting.  I had assumed that they ran the engine a lot while moored up but perhaps they were very continuous cruisers!

It got me thinking about how many miles continuous cruisers do on average.

The boat we saw is 10 years old so it's an average of about 80 engine hours per month.  If they were cruising and averaged 2 miles per engine hour, allowing for hanging around at locks etc, would this be a reasonable rate?  It would mean something like 160 miles per month.  A lot!


I've asked some of the bloggers if they'll tell me how many miles they've travelled.
Gypsy Rover NZ did 4,335 miles from November 06 to June 10 (43mths) – 100 miles per month
Northern Pride in 2009 they did 991 miles in 160 days (just over 5 months) -  185 miles per month
I wouldn't think you'd be likely to maintain this level of travel for 10 years!
Gypsy Rover AU have averaged 120 miles per month in the weeks since they've been cruising this year.

Please continuous cruisers.... will you post an entry on your blogs of your current engine hours, how old the boat is, how many miles you've travelled?  It would be interesting!!

3 comments:

Derek Bird said...

Hi Elly and Mick

We are continuous cruisers for the last 4 years, our engine has done 7500 hrs, only just run in.

I have no idea how many miles we have done, but if we do not move, we run the engine for about 5 hours a day, we do have freezer which consumes a bit

Hope that helps

Derek

Anonymous said...

Derek,

Gosh that is an awful lot to have to run your engine. Do you have a battery management system?

Sue (No Problem)

Carol said...

Hi Elly, I've put my stats on today's posting - but for your information - our engine hours over the same period are 5300 - but we've recently installed a battery meter and have found that we don't need to run the engine for so long when we have not been cruising - good news indeed. On board we run computers, freezer, fridge, tv, internet, satalite receiver, microwave, hairdryer, washer/tumble dryer. Hope this is enlightening to you! Hope to see you when you're 'on the cut!'