Choosing Gyroscopic or Fin Yacht Stabilization

you're probably watching this if you or your significant other have ever experienced on your boat when the weather report turned on you and your boat turned into a washing machine or if you've been in a quartering sea or taking a sea to your Beam for hours I spent sleepless nights being anchored and being rolled by an endless swell and just getting waked by by other vessels or you have older stabilizers and they don't work anchor at zero motion which brings us to a bunch of questions our stabilizers worth the money and the value should I just buy a boat that already has stabilizers do I need to rip and replace uh if my boat has old stabilizers and to put in new ones and much better a gyroscopic stabilizer or traditional fins do I even have enough room for stabilizers on my boat so hopefully we're gonna answer those and more questions about what's available on the market right now for stabilization hang on tight here we go in 2019 we sold everything to realize our dream of living working and cruising full-time on our boat I'm John this is Carlin and this is our home the Elliott stabilization Solutions can cost anywhere from sixty thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending upon the tonnage on your boat and the complexity of the install but let's say we take a 50-foot yacht like the Eliot uh depending upon the solution that we choose it's going to be anywhere from probably uh fifty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars and that's not Pocket Change in fact it should have you considering whether or not you even bought the right boat if you've sunk 400 000 plus into a boat uh that you call home and you look at similar size new boats that are stabilized or multi-hull uh boats that are impossible to find mortgage for all of a sudden going into this thing for 50 60 75 000 to have stabilization probably starts penciling out especially if you're going to be on the boat for another five to ten years should you just buy a boat that already has stabilization uh installed if it's a new boat yes and if that's the case stop watching the video I think it's all done for you but the vast majority of us are interested in the used boat Market I've done some research on you know Yacht World and if you look at it directionally indicates that a boat generally can demand another 50 to 75 000 if it's stabilized versus a boat that is unstabilized that represents you know near of 60 to 75 percent of a return on the investment of putting in stabilization you actually get it back when you sell the boat well that's not the best return on investment compared to anything else that you spend money on refitting or upgrading your boat it's a pretty good return stabilized boats in the last 10 years by and large have about the same technology so if stabilizations and is important to you I'd say skip the hassle of having down time on the boat like we're doing right now and we're sitting here on the hard in the yard it's going to be at least uh you know two to three weeks for the install we're having to tear the entire boat apart that means you have the opportunity for other things to be broken or banged up you know there's just stress involved with that so if you have the opportunity to get a 10 year old or less boat that already has it installed I would definitely recommend that versus doing a refit with current technology now traditional stabilization systems they're hydraulic so they're mechanically driven still the case with the exception of some newer systems that are electromagnetically controlled and or gyroscopic type systems that we'll talk about as well the key part of stabilization system uh that you have with current systems it uses the the role often up to 90 percent uh even while the boat is at anchor and it this is all done because of well it has a computer it has software that drives it so if you're looking at boats that are over 10 years old and have stabilization in them they're going to be handicapped they generally aren't being able to do zero speed or hit anchor uh stabilization and it's simple it's just like if you're gonna go buy a computer today you wouldn't go buy a Commodore 64 or a you know a Radio Shack trash 80. it's dated old technology and so that's really going to be at the the handicap of that particular stabilization system there is some cool stuff that's going on right now uh DMS of Holland is a good example of a manufacturer that actually has a retrofit kit for the Computing side of stabilization so you can go in and retro an older system that has good Hydraulics good and good actuators and really the only handicap is the Computing side of it and you can do an update on that system so that you can get zero speed stabilization and it's just much more accurate so if you do have older system that is something to take a look at but you know it's definitely cheaper than putting in a new system but it isn't going to be free by any means so the stabilization market right now is it's pretty crazy what's going on uh there's there are examples of like um the Magnus effect uh offering that's out there right now it's actually been around for quite some time but they're really starting to pick up speed as far as going into production but it's just starting to break into the market also starting to see some all-in-one stabilization solutions that they they mount to the stern of the boat and they behave like fins at lower speeds and then when you get to higher speeds they actually fold back into the back of the boat and they behave like trim tabs to stabilize the boat all of these things are are either kind of in earlier installations on on production Yachts or they're still in r d but I will spend some time talking about the two main offerings that are out there and that is gyroscopic systems and fin systems and the associated pros and cons associated with both of them so let's start off with the gyroscopic stabilization systems so sea keeper was the original gyroscopic stabilization system that was was introduced and it really still holds the largest market share with the OEM Brands however due to extreme loads that it places on these uh these stringers that it has to bolt to on the boat you don't see a lot of them being retrofitted onto boats or mostly on OEM builds now we've also seen new entrants into the gyroscopic stabilization market and they've simplified things uh take for instance the sea keeper is actually in a vacuum so it can spin faster and not have the drag of of air within it um and and quick as an example has introduced a system as well uh that doesn't have some of that complexity um is actually a little bit easier to install and has some lower costs associated with it and one of those things are pretty cool for the following reasons let's go through and talk about it they can be refit into a boat without having to pull it out of the water so it drives down costs because it's contained in your boat you don't have to drill any holes in your boat uh they're self-contained and they don't require any hydraulic pumps or hoses or any of the traditional systems that support the the fin type of implementations that are hydraulically driven these are really now also the most competitively priced systems that you can put in so it'd be about 50 000 to put the quick Solution on the Elliot yeah they really rule when it comes to zero speed stabilization fins really can't compete when they talk about the efficiency of being able to flatten out the boat so let's talk about the downsides number one they draw a lot of power meaning that you have to run your generator pretty much at all times although some of them are starting to get the wattage draws down to the area that you know a lithium ion phosphate Bank could probably run them for three to five hours the other one is they're not small so take for instance the quick one that we would install on this boat that would be appropriately sized would be 26 inches by 26 inches by about 26 inches it's just a big Cube but these stringers are only 24 inches apart and if you think about it there's not a lot area to put something like that in this boat and you'd have to be crawling around it the boat just wasn't designed for it so really the biggest problem is just trying to find the space for them they also take time to spin up and draw Power when they're doing that so they're not instant on or instant option only these things are taking 25 to 30 minutes to spin up so that you're really getting the stabilization effect out of them and their effectiveness diminishes after you get up to about eight to ten knots when I talk to a lot of the the different reps that that we're selling these Solutions in fact it was funny because they were saying well what you really need is a gyroscopic stabilizer when you're at anchor or out at Sea and and you're below eight knots and you need fins uh when you're above eight knots and you'd have the perfect solution well I guess that's the perfect solution for somebody that has all the money in the world as well as all the space in the world and we have neither of those which brings us to fins fin stabilization has its own trade-offs for instance you have to drill holes through the hole of your boat definitely a downside and fins stick out from your hole which means they can collide with logs or they can get kelp wrapped around them or they can just get damaged traditional systems require a hydraulic pump as well as the power supply pump for the the hydraulic system as well as a cooling system so as you can imagine you have to start putting a lot more equipment within your engine room as well and it creates spaces of Premium as an issue which brings us to the last one which is they require maintenance obviously they have a shaft that goes through the holes that means they have seal that have to be every two years or so replace that means you have to pull the fin off and be able to do that and put them back on they absolutely rule at speed so when they're at that eight or ten knots or faster they just do a better job than gyroscopic canvas everything that I've seen in research as well as the feedback from all the manufacturers across the all these different lines they have instant on and off so literally you flip a switch and they just start working there's no spool up that you have to worry about uh that's important if you have your system turned off and all of a sudden you I know that you're going to get waked by an oncoming vessel or somebody going by you it's super nice to be able to just switch them on and then switch them off now with the new Electric magnetic uh contactless actuators that are out there maintenance power consumption space constraints and zero speed stabilization that's all taken care of um that is no longer an issue that used to present itself or was exclusionary I would say to fins and that's really the reason that we selected the CMC Marine stab 20. it's going to fit nicely in the Eliot it has let's start off the the top it has a shaftless design so quite frankly if it gets ripped off by a log there's no opportunity for water intrusion into the boat they do have a couple O-rings that over two years you have to pull the fin off but it's really just a matter of pulling well I think it's 12 nuts you drop the 12 nuts and then you put those new seals back in and off you go so you don't have to pull apart your shafts or do any of that type of work it's also super compact uh the motor is going to be that diameter right there at the top and they only stand up six inches um in total with the ring that will secure them they're going to be 14 inches in full diameter so that's extremely compact compared to any of the other solutions that are out there so the last piece which is great is power consumption so when you're running the boat so you're at speed it only draws a maximum of 1000 watts and when you're on the hook or at zero speed which takes more leverage with the fins it draws up to 2000 Watts the good part is on average when you're running the boat it's only 250 Watts on average because it doesn't have to consume any power when the fin is not moving and the same thing is when it's sitting on the hook we range about 350 Watts on average which is outstanding that is a really low amperage draw because these are a 240 volt system that means the amperage is anywhere from 0 to 10 amps what does all of that mean in practice so basically we can run this system off of our 21 kilowatt hour lithium-ion phosphate Bank you know making it a full 24 hours before the generator would need to kick on and recharge our bank so those are the key reasons we end up selecting an electric fin system I look forward to seeing people's feedback and what their thoughts are and what type of systems they put in as well like anything in boating it's all about trade-offs because we have so much power on this boat with our lithium iron phosphate battery bank and that space was such a constraint for us this was by and far the best solution for us in the Eliot we're also seeing a lot of other cool new entrants in this area so take for instance uh Humphrey has a 24 volt electric fin system and it is super sexy they're carbon fiber fins they're integrated with their Interceptor trim tab solution which really controls not only the roll but the pitch of the boat as well it's a great solution that's out there side power also has some new fins they call them Vector fins and they actually create lift and reduce the drag on the boat so they actually save fuel and can increase the speed of the boat as well unfortunately though that solution is still dependent on Hydraulics so again there are those trade-offs I hope this helps you in your journey of evaluating which stabilization makes the most sense for you or if you're looking to do a new build on a boat or just out shopping for boats that already may or may not have stabilization

Channel: Elli-Yacht

Views: 21,605

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Id: n-seaqpJpos

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023