A treat for Tom Cunliffe to find a working semi-diesel in Denmark during Summer 2017 

I'm so pleased that's brought back memories and connected you with your grandfather again. Tom

I didn't know that. Good name.

Sailors take advantage of things that are useful to sailing. Not to one-up ya mate but when you run out of fuel- well, yer outa fun.

@@seashepherds4959 I hear you, ditto, you don't hear of any container ships running out of fuel, on the other hand you do hear of aircraft running out of fuel. All good fun. Cheers

Very interesting Philip. Theodora is now Kindly Light again, having been rebuilt with extraordinary attention to detail - but without an engine at all. I shall pass on your comments to the guy involved.

I know Malcolm well!

What a tragedy. I sailed with one of those Kelvins too. The petrol was kept in a Teacher's Whisky bottle. It fitted the engineer's hand perfectly as it was poured into those lovely brass cups. So sorry to hear your sad tale. Life goes on. Tom

I think I mentioned I was shipmates with one of these engines nearly 50 years ago. We did fail to start it on one occasion in mid-Atlantic The only way, once the air was gone, was to pump up the compressed air cylinder with a manual pump. As I recall, the lever was 4ft long. With 5 of us working in relay, we got enough pressure after about 18 hours. A real killer, but it worked and with a grateful tonka tonk the faithful old engine rumbled into life. I don't think you could hand-start them - certainly not ours which was a biggish one in a 90 ton trader.

look like 24 hp model.

We had a Norwegian 50hp Wichmann that thing had a single 45Litre cylinder. Horsepower isn't really the thing that matters, the tourqe in these thing however is monumental!

from a museum: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pe_mt8gZyAY.html

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kCoOTbhapnk.html

A single cylinder with 50 litres displacement?? Hot damn!

Hi Graham. Common rail? Common as muck , Mother might have said.

I understand that these engines get up to around 500RPM at full power. Tickover sounds like one power stroke per second.

Hi, Tom. The 1200hp six cylinder Fairbanks-Morse in the army tug I served on in 1969 had a maximum of 325 RPM at Full Ahead.

No mate! It all works AND IT NEVER STOPS! Tom

@@TomCunliffeYachtsandYarns Yes. Diesel is best at that.

Thanks for raising this important point and thanks for being so generous in your comment. I will try to come up with something to make it clear in due course. Better not hold our breath. I just keep on trucking and wait for something to grab my attention before I do a blog.

Power is Torque X RPM. The diesel engine in this boat runs slowly but has a lot of torque. In the outboard engine the torque is low. It has to rev faster to give the same power. BUT the power can be the same for both engines. For a given power you either rev slowly with big bangs or rev fast with little bangs. Think of the 2 speed winches. Your arms can only generate a finite amount of torque so you change the gearing in the winch to give the sustainable amount of power in the main halyard to raise the main at a given linear speed The outboard engine has to be small and light otherwise you could not lift it on and off the dinghy. However, being small it has to rev faster to produce enough power. Diesel engines are compression ignition, simple and reliable with no ignition circuitry. They run on cheap low volatile fuel. All good attributes in a freighter. Diesels have to be heavier built to withstand the high compression. They produce their max torque at low rpm so generally run relatively slowly. They will have a large flywheel to store the energy and make it less impulsive. ... so they chug chug along at low rpm. A diesel engine in an outboard would be too heavy and difficult to start with a pull cord. So, neither 'power' is better or worse than any other it is the same thing. BUT high torque from a big old diesel is more satisfying in a boat since it has the 'chug chug' factor which we all find so satisfying! "Power is vanity, torque is sanity" Keep up the good work. Thanks for your no-nonsense, practical contribution to yachting over so many years. Birmingham Navy, Solihull-on-Sea

Many thanks to the Birmingham Navy for this illuminating comment. I learn something every day, and if you want to know about engineering, you can't do better than find a man with a Birmingham accent. Always encouraging when I'm on the phone sourcing a part for my old car! Cheers Brummies!

On the same theme, just, … I have a motor cycle made by Honda called NC700. Only produces 47 horses flat out at 6K rpm. It’s a motorcycle engine based on car engine, that’s gone full circle back to long stroke narrow bore arrangement. It’s brilliant and most enjoyable to ride, unlike revvy sports machines, when riding at legal speeds, which, lets face it, we are all now compelled to do with modern electronic enforcement methods. From the lights, it will go 0-30 in a jiffy with out barely having to rev the engine. Would luv to see a marinized version. It would be so much smaller and easier to maintain than my current Volvopenta D1-20.

@@whitefields5595 Ah, now I get it. I think 🤔 love to see these big thumpers on a dyno.

Never. I drive a 1949 Bentley with a long-stroke 4 litre engine and I've forgotten more about torque than most people today will ever know. But thanks for making the point. It's a good one!