Re: Newbie's wife wants gas budget
Trying to give advice on how to budget fuel expenses for a boat, without knowing how much you will use it, and under what conditions, is difficult.
Your motor probably burns somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 gallons an hour at WOT (wide open throttle). By pulling the power back, without coming off of plane, you can reduce that consumption quite a bit. Reducing speed further will cause the boat to come off of plane and will require you to add power again, thereby increasing fuel consumption. This is referred to as "getting behind the power curve." I realize that this bit of info may seem to be more than you want to know, but it is useful because the rate and manner in which fuel is consumed plays into your expected boat usage.
For example, if you take the kids water skiing and they are small, you could probably run the boat at less than WOT and still remain on plane, while giving them a decent skiing speed. Or, perhaps they want to tube and you don't want to get going too fast, so you run off plane and end up pushing a big bow wave. That will probably use more fuel than the water skiing.
With all of this in mind, what I recommend is that you search the net for some boat reviews. Try to find one with a similar boat/motor package. In those reviews, you will often find charts and/or graphs, depicting fuel consumption at various rpm settings and hull speeds. By taking that information and combining it with a sense of how often you will use your boat, and what you will be doing with it, you can make some "guesstimates" on what you need to budget for the boat.
If the logic doesn't work, you can always bribe her with jewelry!
