Relatively quiet, less smokey 2-strokes

[Scott Galloway]

I only have 24 hours on my new Nissan 4 stroke motor, and I have not yet switched to my second prop with a flatter pitch. So I am not the best person to ask. I bought the Nissan 6 based upon testimonials gleaned from this forum after looking at a range of options. The power appears to be fine for my kind of use. No rivers or tidal currents to speak of here, and I primarily use the motor to get into and out of the harbor. There is no smoke, and it appears to work just fine with the lazarette lid closed, although I usually leave it open to gain access to the handle while maneuvering in the harbor. As far as what I have read on this forum, the standard long shaft is long enough to prevent cavitation for most folks. An extra long shaft would be nice on any motor, but isn't necessary for my use.

Also, since we have a lot of floating kelp in these parts, any extra inches on the shaft just increases the chance of fouling the prop. I can more or less reach between the well and the motor and free the prop, although I once had to pull my Honda 7.5 motor at sea when this happened because of the volume of kelp wrapped around the prop.

I probably could have reversed the prop and spun the kelp away, but I opted to lift the 80 lb motor with my davit and free the kelp out of water. I had to cut the kelp away with my knife. It was wound that tight. Of course using the lifting davit at sea put both me and the davit in the way of a boom in the event of an accidental jibe. Fortunately, I had my trusted ninety-year-old helmsman with me that day and all went well. I do trust the guy. He once stopped a Navy Locomotive from going into the Honolulu harbor after a mechanical failure sent the train freewheeling toward a near-certain launch into the briny blue.

I do have two gripes with the Nissan motor, however. The flushing set-up could be easier, and the wing nut that increases the tension on the shaft so that the motor doesn't turn so easily cannot be tightened on my motor sufficiently to lock it in place. Indeed, the Nissan manual cautions the operator not to try to use the tensioning nut to lock the motor in place, for it was not designed to do that…or so says the manual.

So, as I am running about on my foredeck reattaching my lower shrouds after a tabernacle operation, and raising the main etc., the motor slowly changes course, which makes the process of a single-handed escape from my harbor more difficult, and particularly so as I wander on my zigzag course though weekend harbor traffic. Not a fatal flaw so long as you keep checking on it, but a nuisance nonetheless. Perhaps I have been too timid in tightening that wing nut, because I have been told by a Nissan dealer that she has no problem using the wing nut on her personal Nissan to lock the shaft in place. I tighten mine as far as I can by hand (no wrench), and the motor still wanders off as torque does its thing.

As far as storing a motor in the cockpit locker, I have a hard time fitting a bucket through the hatch of my cockpit lockers, and I have to crawl in sideways myself, so I am in agreement with Mike. Do some measuring before you try to drop a motor into one of those lockers.

The lazarette locker is a dandy place to store my Nissan 6 four stroke long shaft motor and was a dandy place to store the Honda 7.5 long shaft motor before it. The other advantage of the lazarette is that, unlike the cockpit lockers, it is ventilates below (the well), forward (the hatch behind the tiller), and above, the two vents in the top hatch. Also there is absolutely no lifting by hand. The Garhauer lift lifts my motor from a horizontal position in the locker to vertical and drops it into the well. I am not so sure how well the davit would work if you tried to use it to lay the motor down in one of the cockpit lockers. You might or might not have to do some lifting sans davit, since if it fits in the cockpit locker at all, the motor head will probably only fit head forward where the locker is wider.

When you install the Garhauer lifting davit, follow Gene Robert's written instructions for the Myron Spaulding designed installation used in Gene's boat. But crawl into your cockpit locker first and check out the floor under your cockpit. At least on my boat, hull #330, the floor is made up of multiple layers of glass with spaced longitudinal strips of encapsulated wood strips (boards) running fore and aft and is not a solid plywood core, so where you drill the holes for the base mounting bracket for the davit may be very important. Outside of specifically where to drill the holes, the installation is a snap. Gene's instructions are in the Ariel Manual available from the Association. I used teak backing plates for the base below the cockpit floor and for the ring attachment bolts inside the cockpit locker. And have fun working behind that vertical cockpit support post where you mounting base bolts will penetrate the cockpit floor. If you drop a nut, you will probably have to shove it with a flexible rod down into the lower bilge where you can retrieve it in the sump behind the battery.

Of course you are not supposed to drop things, but suffice it to say that two one inch square lengths of teak duct-taped together so that the duct tape formed a flexible joint did the trick for the nuts that I dropped. Using teak is not necessary. Any wood will do. The harbor board is considering selling steel mining rights in my slip for what I have dropped over the side in the past two years.