What size auxiliary motor?

[Gecko]

I have a 26x with a 50hp main motor. I want an auxiliary motor for safety and possibly trolling but I also want it to be light enough to transfer to an inflatable easily. What hp of motor could I expect to work well for me in the ocean off the pacific northwest?

[c130king]

Gecko,

Personally my auxilliary motor is my sails. Maybe, just maybe, someday I will buy a dinghy of some sort and get a motor for it and then maybe that motor could be a back-up motor to my Merc.

However, I did a search on "kicker" and found these two threads:

Kicker Motor

Auxialliary Motor Installation

You can do a search on "kicker" or maybe "aux*" (the * is a wildcard...since I don't think I can spell the whole word) and probably find lots more info on what others have said on this subject. And I believe there are links to other threads on this topic inside the second link above.

Welcome to the board and good luck finding the info you seek.

Cheers,
Jim

[waternwaves]

a 4 horse two stroke is light enough to move between the dinghy and boat. I carry mine on the sternrail.

I am not sure I am going to bother with a lowering aux motor mount. I saw a dingy lashed to the side of a sailoat pushing the 2 along quite well, with only a 4 hp. Seems easier than messing with mounting an adustable motor mount

[Chinook]

I use a 3.5 hp Nissan 2 stroke, with a long shaft, carried on a retractable stern motor mount. The motor weighs 28 lbs and is easy to transfer from the mount to the dinghy without hoisting gear. I understand that the 2 stroke is no longer available new in the US, but a used one might be located. Going with a 4 stroke in the 3.5 hp size probably adds 10 lbs of weight. I wouldn't want to wrestle that much more weight without using some sort of hoist. The 3.5 does a great job trolling with a downrigger, and it's also a good dinghy motor.

[Gecko]

I am surprised and pleased to hear you have had enough power with quite small motors. I should have mentioned I am partial to 4 strokes, (even though my main is a 2 stroke which is kind of noisy) and the boat already had a kicker bracket when I bought it. Thanks for the imput. Has anyone used a small 4 stroke for trolling with downriggers?

[Kelly Hanson East]

Ive trolled my with my Nissan 4 HP..the 4 stroke weighs 57 pounds though.

This is a heavy, heavy motor to hand transfer between a boat and dinghy though, imho. One slip and it will go overboard and become a mooring. Im not a weightlifter, but I am not too weak either.

Chip Hindes (US Marine physique) warned me about moving a 50+ pound motor and he was right.

[Rick Westlake]

Before you obsess on horsepower, check this out ...

World-cruiser and noted cruising author Lin Pardey, at 4'10" and 98 lbs, is sculling her 5-ton cruising yacht Seraffyn, a boat that she and her husband Larry sailed around the world without an engine. This is from Self-Sufficient Sailor, a book which is now 25 years old. Their new larger boat, Taliesin, is engineless as well - save for that sculling oar, and excellent sails.

I believe that you could do fine with a 2.5-hp kicker, which would probably cost about $500 less than a 4-hp ... and weigh less ... and get a small inflatable dinghy with a hard transom, rated to use that kicker, for about the difference in price between the smaller and larger engines. Then, when you're anchored out, you can use the engine on the dink to run in to shore for beer, pizza and ice.

Coincidentally, I paid $500 for my inflatable, a Saturn KaBoat from boatstogo.com ... I row it for simplicity's sake, but it could mount up to a 2.5 hp engine. I bet it would fly with one, but it's not worth $900 (engine and mother-ship's stern mount) for me to find out.

(At the same time, I'm not getting a sculling oar long enough to drive Bossa Nova. Where the heck would I keep it? )

[ukauction]

I was looking at the 2.5HP Suzuki 4-stroke for an emergency kicker / dink motor.... It looks reasonable, has a 3-year warranty and weighs 28 pounds and has a built in fuel tank which they say gives 55min at WOT - my only concern is if 2.5HP would even move the Mac X - the 4HP just looks far too heavy to hump around on the back of a boat - at 55 pounds

[waternwaves]

oars fit nicel bungeed to the front of the mast, vertically. especially telescoping oars.

[Rick Westlake]

oars fit nicel bungeed to the front of the mast, vertically. especially telescoping oars.

Does anyone make a 15-foot telescoping oar? And that would probably be about nine or ten feet long, telescoped. But the Pardeys say they can scull Seraffyn at 1.5 kts in calm waters.

My point was actually that if a 98-lb person could push a five-ton keelboat with an oar, then our two-tons-maybe Macs could certainly be pushed around by a 2.5-hp engine. Not nearly at hull speed, but probably at a reasonable trolling speed. (Chinook, are you running that 3.5-hp Nissan at full power when you use it as a trolling motor?)

Oh, and a quote from Self-Sufficient Sailor - "In Javea, Spain, we watched the owner of a 32-footer with its damaged prop shaft power to the shipyard with a 3-horsepower engine mounted on his inflatable. He came putting back and said, 'They're ready for you right now. I'll power you in.' He tied alongside and that tiny engine pushed all 5 tons of Seraffyn along in spite of the 8-knot headwind."

[Chinook]

When I talk about trolling, I'm referring to trolling for salmon, trout and mackinaws. I use a downrigger so I can troll deep, anywhere from 30 feet to 150 feet down, and often with a flasher ahead of the lure or bait. This type of trolling is best done at very slow speed, typically 1.5 to 2 knots. Even at idle speed the 50 has trouble maintaining a suitably slow speed, and it's not good on the motor to run that slowly for long periods of time. Thus, the kicker. My 3.5 hp can maintain trolling speed at less than half throttle. I lock the motor in place and steer with the rudders down. This works fine if there's no wind. If it's windy, I sometimes have to reach back and turn the kicker to help turn the boat. Wide open it will push the Mac at 4.5 to 5 knots, but only with minimum wind, current, and relatively smooth water surface. It quickly begins to struggle if these conditions become adverse. Trolling for warm water big game fish tends to be done at higher speeds and on or near the surface. The kicker is useless for this kind of trolling, of course, but hull speed (6 knots or so) is close to ideal.

[dxg68]

Kelly,

You have 57 pounds auxiliary motor. Did you mount it similar to Jack’s mod? Is fiberglass strong enough to support 57 ponds kicker hanging like in Jack’s mod or it is not a concern at all? Thanks!

[Kelly Hanson East]

There is a thread on this in(corrected, in Repairs)

thread here ... i mounted mine lower than Jacks, since I have a short shaft motor.

The right route is to probably go long shaft and mount it higher.

One advantage of my method is you dont have to cut an access hole in the transom - I bonded the wood to the hull, and have 4 SS bolts with 1 inch washers backing them inside.

I trailer with motor on this, and also power the with same mount.

The thread above has a link to Jacks mod of the same, which is frankly better done than mine.

[dxg68]

Kelly,

It looks like your mount is shown in fully up position. And it looks like the anti-ventilation plate of the motor is below the water line already. Why do you need to submerge the motor even further with the retractable bracket? It looks like the motor bracket is mounted too low. Do I see it wrong? What is the vertical travel of the bracket?

Thank you very much for the info!!!

[Kelly Hanson East]

The skeg is in the water at the full up position (travel 14 inches IIRC) but you need to drop the motor down most of the way to prevent cavitation when using it as a kicker.

You can get the motor out of the water completely by dropping the motor one notch, then tilting it forward to lift it clear.

I usually leave the skeg in the water and motor that way (6 kts or so)