Saturday 28 April 2007

Propulsion


The sails, obviously.
And the auxiliary diesel. This is the original, a classic, the SABB G-10. That's right, it's SABB, not SAAB. They're a Norweigan company who have been building marine engines for nearly a century.
These are seriously rugged engines, by all accounts. It's single-cylinder, hand-crankable (in a pinch) and coupled to a variable-pitch propeller. There's a lever up in the cockpit for adjusting the pitch of the propeller. Looking forward to trying this out. Apparently, you set the prop for maximum efficiency, according to rpm, speed, sea-condition, etc. There's no reverse gear, you just turn the blades of the prop around. When under sail, the prop can be set to cause minimum drag.

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