Boats?

It seems like a boat would be a perfect place for a gasifier the fuel is far less explosive than gas, the weight shouldn’t be a problem and since boat motors tend to run wide out most of the time turn down ratio shouldn’t be a problem.
The only problem I see is Horsepower. My boat runs TWO 300 hp ford 427’s a total of 600 hp.
OK I understand if I change to wood gas I’m gonna lose Hp. But since I barely have a 6 to1 compression ration i think I can gain a LOT of that back with 11 to 1 compression pistons that are readily available.So lets say I wind up with 500 hp thats a pretty big gasifier!
Has anybody Done anything like this?

That is a lot of horsepower! Wayne is working the 90-120 HP range with the standard design. The new one he’s building should make more than that - how much more we don’t know yet.

Just curious, is this a really big boat? Or a really fast boat?

Its not really either,its a 37 foot chris craft roamer weighs in at about 24,000 pounds and runs about 30 mph.
The "big " part is its thirst for gas! It uses about a gallon a mile so Im thinking as a woodgasser it would use about 20 pounds of fuel to the mile… The current tank is about 200 gallons or 200 miles . Full that tank weighs about a ton so the same range in wood would add about a ton, not a overwhelming amount.
Im not really planning to convert this boat now just sorta daydreaming ,when it hit me what a great match it would be for wood.

There was a large boat owner on here at one time thinking about converting Diesels and it was obvious that wasnt a real good plan but there are a LOT of smaller boats with large gas engines that would seem to be a LOT better match.

Hi Lewis, I daydream about having a pontoon boat with a canopy and a 4 cylinder engine on it with a standard transmission so I can have a reverse gear and then use a typical driveshaft down a long frame with a carrier bearing that will lift over floating logs and the such. I could spend my summers on the Mississippi and camp and cut wood on the islands out there using solar power. I have a couple of gasifiers that are ready to go and don’t weigh much. It is very doable. I guess I would eat a lot of fish. Your huge monster is probably not practical and the coast guard may also have something to say about it. You would have to haul a barge behind it and pipe the gas ahead to the engines like I currently do with the trailer behind my truck. Regards, Mike LaRosa

I kinda got to thinking that the Cord of firewood might not be the biggest part of the deal.The size of a gasifier that would burn 10 pounds of wood a minute and have say a 1000 pound hopper might be a bigger point!
Looks like it might be a better Idea for a trawler type hull where you would only need about 100 hp and could carry several cords of wood.