Burning Fuel is Fun

[Freestyle]

My son asked me to take a boat load of high schoolers via boat to their homecoming dance which has skinny water access about 30 nm away. My teenager so rarely invites me into his world I had to accept.

The 3 PM departure to make sure I had daylight on my side to navigate the uncharted creek turned into 4:30 after several "oh my god's" which is teenage speak for elevating the trivial to life threatening.

Faced with 30 nm cruise and 2.5 hours of daylight, I let the old boat run. A 43 DCMY is supposed to go 14 knots at cruise. I have become so accustomed to running 8-9 knots to get 5 gph burn I had forgotten what the boat can do. Without making any special preparations, I pushed the throttlles and the damn thing planed at 12 and settled into a nice 14 knot cruise. We made it safely in daytime.

Total burn was 16 gph into a stiff outgoing tide wch really is not that bad for the fun we had. And that is the way to look at fuel burn, burn whatever it takes to have the most fun. Dockage, insurance and maintenance are the real costs.

Fuel burn is choosing between sitting in the Club Seats or the end zone bleachers. Both are fun depending on the game.

Bruce

Freestyle
1976 43 DCMY
Tampa

 

[DCMY #92]

I couldn't agree more! I'm in Palmetto. We should hook up and burn some fuel together.

 

[krush]

for most 100hour per year users, fuel costs are a fairly small percentage of overall costs.

 

[DLCameron2]

Who cares how much it costs? If you want to burn crushed up dinosaurs have at it! From mini bikes, boats of all shapes and sizes, and cars I have enjoyed running internal combustion engines and having a great time. Freestyle, as far as I am concerned you could not teach your son a better lesson! However, I guess Obama would not agree with me! LOL

DC

 

[MikeP]

I frankly can't figure out WHERE oil comes from. Seems that if it really was just dinosaurs/other animals we'd have run out a long time ago at the world's comsumption rate. Of course there were many hundreds of millions of years to deposit it but I still find it hard to believe. Coal I can understand but is there actually science that says if you bury an animal for long enough the "remains" become crude oil?

My car can get around 21-22mpg on it's best day so I certainly can't be called much of an energy saver. But compared to the muscle car days it's positively frugal!

I agree re burning the fuel. Last season we ran our 53 on plane from behind Rock Hall to Kent Island - boat ran great and handled/felt much better than it does in it's normal (for us) 9-10k. I decided that we'd do that most of the time but the bottom was too dirty this season to do it anyway. Maybe next year.

 

[spartonboat1]

I frankly can't figure out WHERE oil comes from. Seems that if it really was just dinosaurs/other animals we'd have run out a long time ago at the world's comsumption rate. Of course there were many hundreds of millions of years to deposit it but I still find it hard to believe. Coal I can understand but is there actually science that says if you bury an animal for long enough the "remains" become crude oil?

It has been fairly well established by the scientific community, esp. in 'da ile patch' that liquid and gaseous hydro-carbons are generated sub-surface within the earth and are not 'surface deposits'. Oil is being found around the world in increasingly larger finds that is far below the surface of the earth. Some finds are 3-5 miles underground out in the oceans. After all, oil and gas are mostly hydro-carbon molecules, with many other nasty, dangerous chemicals in the mix.

Some oil fields that were considered played out have been revisited many years later and found to have been regenerated...no dinosaurs involved there. Also, it has been noted that many major gas oil fields are either associated with deep oil fields or are below major limestone deposits, not 'fossil' remains.

The Russians first proposed the concept that 'fossil fuels' are NOT from fossils, but are continually subterranean generated. Based on their proposals, over the past 50 years, they have discovered oil many miles below the earth's surface. The deepest well effort is pushing for 20 miles down (I believe), but easy credit has dried up and may have slowed that well.

P.s., the concept of 'fossil fuels' was an American concept from the 1770's or so and was because oil was found where fossil deposits were also located; my guess is it was found in Pennsylvania. So a mis-conception was born. The media world wide and esp. in the US is either too lazy or lacks the intellectual curiousity (assumes intellect, not in evidence) to cease promoting 'fossil' and 'fuel' in every sentence.

Feel free to flame me, but this is long term, well grounded information.

 

[Vincentc]

Sparton,
Thanks for the view from the Oil Patch. It makes sense to defer to petroleum engineers and seems much more plausible than the concept that there could ever have been enough dinosaurs to produces the incredible quantity of oil that has been pumped from below.
However, since oil is a hydrocarbon, doesn't carbon come from organic material, therefore how can carbon originate from below the surface of the earth?
Regards,
Vincent