With a total inventory of over 60 petrol outboard engines in our fleet, we at Commercial Rib Charter have kept a close eye on how the diesel outboard market has developed over recent years. Petrol outboards are very advanced these days, with lean fuel burn, sleek lightweight designs and good reliability, but ultimately diesel is far easier to obtain in ports and marinas around the country and it is much cheaper to supply for our clients.
Today however, diesel outboards have come a long way and are more reliable than ever – which is our No.1 priority in order to keep downtime for our clients to a minimum. The top spec 300 horsepower diesels pack some eye-catching benefits too. Most notable of these is the far higher torque of nearly 700Nm at 2000rpm. In layman’s terms, torque is the ‘oomph’ you get from an engine. Horsepower is how quickly energy can be delivered but torque is the amount of work an engine can exert. In a marina for instance, you’ll find with a diesel outboard that you only need the engine in gear briefly to start moving 3-4 knots. With a petrol outboard you might need it in gear and with some added RPM to get the boat moving at 4 knots.
Other benefits of diesel outboards include:
- Longer service intervals – 200hrs instead of 100hrs
- Ability to run on biodiesel and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) – some wind farm operators are now requesting CTVs to run on this
- Fuel consumption is nearly half that of petrol outboards
- Fewer CO2 and nitric oxide emissions
- Quick shift capability means they can reliably perform crash stops if needed
- Up to 10,000 hours service life (compared to 3,000-4,000 for many petrol outboards)
We’re excited to see how these new developments change the marine industry and possibly our fleet in the coming years. The extra torque and bollard pull from these engines could be really useful for when we’re manipulating cables during nearshore cable landings and also provide big fuel savings for our customers when running high speed safety boats and rescue boats all over the UK and Europe.
