(Scott here)

Sheboygan to Kenosha
September 21, 2023

How did my plans match up with what really happened??

Plan Comparison
Date: September 21, 2023
Start at: 9:00 am Actually left at 7:10 am
End at: 5:00 pm Arrived at fuel dock at 4:33 pm, at our slip and set up at 5:11 pm
Total Time: 7:58 Total time was actually 10:17
Distance: 82.7 Total distance was 83.1 miles
Fuel Plan: 120 gallons We put in 39.464 gallons

Our average speed was 8.1 mph with a max speed of 11 mph.
I am glad we left at 7 am! My time estimation was at 10 mph. Our actual speed was much less than that at an average of 8.1 mph so it added some time to our trip that I didn’t really realize until the last hour or so.

I pretty much ran the engines at 1450 RPM all day. Mainly because I wanted to see what my fuel burn would be at that RPM. I think my average speed was probably closer to 9 mph, but I get the 8.1 average mph due to my 2-mph speed in the marinas. Only go as fast as you want to hit something!

I will admit, I am not sure how to calculate my fuel burn, “gallons per hour”. Each engine ran for 9.8 hours. Do I add that together and divide by the fuel I put in? Do I just use the total 9.8 hours? What if I turn an engine off and just run with 1 engine for a while to conserve fuel? Then 9.8 hours would not be accurate. If I just use the 9.8 hours, I have a fuel burn of about 4.02 gallons per hour. If I add them together, since that is the number of hours the engines ran (19.6 hours) I get a fuel burn of 2.01 gallons per hour. That I think is more realistic and similar to what others have told me they get with similar engines.

Now, thinking like a land lubber, 83.1 miles divided by 39.464 gallons gives me 2.10 miles per gallon with running both engines. Going into this thing I was estimating 1 mile per gallon and figured my budget out with that. I’ll take 2 miles per gallon any day of the week at that point!

This will be interesting as time goes on as to how this changes things as well. We had great weather today, we were not pounding into waves or fighting the wind. When we head to Hammond, IN which will be 63.7 miles and just over 6 hours using 9 mph as my estimated speed, I might increase my RPM’s to 1700 and see what happens with the fuel burn and speed.

If you are interested, I have two of the engines below. Under Recreational Ratings, our engines are the 330 HP ones. At 2800 RPM the burn rate should be 16.8 gph per engine. That would be 33.6 gallons per hour – holy fuel burn!! I won’t be doing that!

Time to enjoy Kenosha for a few days. I will be back after the weekend.