A recent question on Bayliner 4087 fuel consumption:
We are currently in negotiations to purchase a Bayliner 4087, 2001 model with 330 Cummins Engines. Can you set my expectations for fuel burn?
Second question, we have just sold our Grand Banks 32 for a faster boat. However, much of the time I do anticipate cruising in the 8- to 10-knot range. Will the Bayliner do that efficiently? I expect that it will run fine at those speeds, but with some hulls that are semi planning such as the 4087’s, it may not be that comfortable.
Response:
Our 4087 is heavier than most at 29,000 pounds, so our fuel efficiency and speed numbers will be slightly lower than some. Wide open, the Cummins 270s will burn 29 GPH. The engines will not live long at that throttle position though. We run our boat very conservatively to get good engine longevity. We chose to use two basic speeds: 7.75 knots and around 13 or 14 knots. At 13 to 14 knots we burn 15 to 17 GPH. It takes roughly 320 HP to maintain that speed in our boat. You may chose to run faster than we do – most do – and, if you do, your burn rate will be higher.
At displacement speeds, you basically just pay for moving the displacement of the boat. The hull shape matters a bit but it’s mostly just weight. At 7.5 to 7.75 knots, you’ll burn under 3 GPH (right around 2.5GPH). We’ve lasted as much as 73 hours on a single fuel load (220 gallons) at those speeds and still had more than a quarter tank remaining. Because the Bayliner is lighter than your Grand Banks at displacement speeds, it’ll consume less fuel down there.
For comfort at low speed, the boat does wander a bit and doesn’t really like an aft quartering sea, but I just put it on autopilot and let the autopilot deal with it. It doesn’t bother me a bit.
–jrh
What was the autopilot system that you used on your 4087? I’ve noticed the same wandering in a quartering sea in my 4076, it is not too bothersome, but autopilot may be a nice to have feature.
We were using an old Raymarine Autopilot. It is a Raymarine autopilot with S2 core pack, type 2 hydraulic pump, ST7000 controller at lower helm, and S100 wireless remote. More detail up at: https://mvdirona.com/dirona/.
I have a 4087 twin 250s at 8 knots what will be my fuel consumption, new boat to me!!!!!
It really depends upon the speed you want to travel at but fuel economy can be excellent. If you are willing to cruise at 6.5 to 7.0 kts, you will burn 2.2 GPH which is right around 3 nautical miles per gallon. At the other end of the spectrum, at wide open throttle the boat will run around 18 kts (might go a bit faster if your boat is lightly loaded) but it’ll burn right around 28 gph at this speed which is about 0.6 nm/gal. The boat is capable of excellent mileage.