Power & Precision
Capt. Richard Thiel discovers that there are as many ways to design a good engine room as there are types of boats.
It probably comes as no surprise to you that I spend most of my boat-show time in engine rooms. In fact, on many boats I never even get to the saloon or accommodations. My goal has always been to identify those characteristics that constitute a good engine room.
But over the years I’ve also learned that while the layout of an engine room is important, it’s necessarily secondary to a boat’s particular design and mission. Or to put it another way, while good engine rooms share certain features, there’s no such thing as an “ideal” engine room. Each kind of boat demands a specific kind of ER.
With that in mind, at the recent Yachts Miami Beach Show, I thought I’d focus on the ways in which the builders of different types of boats have approached engine room layout. I wanted to look at a number of very different boat styles to see if I could discern common features among them. Faced with the huge number of boats on display, a big part of my job was simply whittling the field to a workable number. In the end, I boiled my search down to seven very different boats, each of which approached engine room design in a different way. As you’ll see, I discovered that there are many ways to achieve engine room perfection.
This article originally appeared in the June 2016 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
