To repower or not to repower…to paraphrase the Bard, that’s the $8,000 question! I have a 78h30 that came with the vintage 9hp Yanmar YSM-12 engine and one day after a particularly frustrating session of knuckle busting, I finally decided enough was enough; that I was going to keep the boat anyway since it is in very good shape and serves my purpose well, so why not go ahead and repower the darn thing. That consideration launched a year’s worth of research which I will briefly share here in case other owners are considering the same fate for their boats. I decided to forgo fixation on a drop-in Yanmar replacement as that was just too “inside the box” for me. I thought if I was going to spend upwards of $10k on this project, then I should be more expansive in my view; take time to look at the Big Picture so as to see all the possible options. It might be, I thought, that I would come back to the Yanmar eventually, but, if I did, it would be with the knowledge I had considered all the options before me, thus coming to believe the Yanmar was, in fact and after all said and done, the best way to go. The other factor guiding my consideration was that I am not purely a sailing purist, i.e., I don’t believe sailboats, just because they are sailboats, deserve to be necessarily underpowered as was the case with my boat and the YSM-12. I sail on Galveston Bay which is prone to strong north and northwesterly winds in winter – what little winter we have in south Texas – and spritely prevailing southwesterlies in summer. Given the fair amount of freeboard the H30 has and narrow dockages, a little extra power when you might need it is certainly handy to have. Another consideration was that if I opted for something other than the Yanmar, installa-tion would not be able to demand massive alterations to the existing engine space and engine bed. This project had a strict budget which could not be exceeded, so regard-less how desirable an engine other than the Yanmar might be, it’s level of desirability was strategically linked to the need for as little modification of the existing spaces as possible. After all due consideration, the engine chosen was the 24hp Bukh DV24me, 2-cyl. marine engine. Ok…I didn’t know what Bukh engine was either, but they are built in Denmark and are in every way more robust than the Yanmar 2GM20F engine against which it was competing. The Bukh started off a clean sheet of paper as a marine engine specifically designed for commercial lifeboats; in other words, the things were built to be installed new and never touched except for occasional routine inspection or maintenance and then be expected to run perfectly if called upon to perform their mission. Feature for feature, dollar for dollar, pound for pound, the Bukh wins the competition against the Toyota-built Yanmar. And, it’s installation was very straight forward without any surprises, cans of worms or Pandora’s Boxes. Very, very little modification was needed to the engine bed and it fit the existing space – snugly – but it fit with sufficient room for routine maintenance such as changing oil and fuel filters. A little machining was required on the shaft coupler, but it cost less than $100. More or less, start-to-finish installation took about 5-6 working days and the work was done with the boat in the water. A quick word about Bukh engines, too, is in order. While not widely known in the U.S. as a replacement engine for "sport" boats, the engines are highly regarded in Europe. During my research, I talked with a longtime friend who is originally from Holland and who also happens to be a very large Hunter dealer in Gulfport, Miss. I asked him if he'd ever heard of Bukhs and he said not only had he heard of them, they are widely distributed overseas. My tour of the dealer's facility in Houston revealed a large maintenance support staff and parts inventory, so local support -- another key element in my decision as to which engine to select -- is not a problem, leastwise in the Houston area. The Bukhs are specifically designed for raw-water cooling although I suppose fresh-water cooling might be an option. On the 78h30, there's little space to install the equipment required for fresh-water cooling, so I'm using salt-water cooling. My boat is equipped with the standard 1”x49” shaft and 2-blade 13x13 prop that came with this circa boat. We decided to wait and see what kind of performance we’d get with the existing prop and shaft before making a move in that direction. Other than the typical prop walk that pushes the boat’s stern to starboard while in reverse, maneu-vering is greatly improved and you can easily move forward, stop and go in reverse. In fact, probably more power is getting to the prop than the little prop can take advantage of, but control of the boat under power is vastly improved. Also, motoring along is greatly improved and vibration compared to the YSM-12 is practically eliminated. At high power settings, there is some “thumping” on the hull which I suspect is from the pressure of the prop rotating after of the strut and non-compressibility nature of water; reduce the power a bit and the “thumping” goes away. It’s quite likely that in the future, I will reshaft the boat and change the wheel, but, for now, things are fine…just taking it one project at a time. A side note, the Bukh DV24me engine can also be fitted with a passive turbocharger – one that uses vacuum instead of highly-compressed and very hot air – to up the horsepower to 29 horsepower if 24 is found not to be sufficient for some reason. As to cost and support, suffice to say the overall project was completed for $8,000, some $2,000 less than what installing the Yanmar 2GM20F would have cost me and all that money is directly attributed to the price difference between the Bukh and the Yanmar with the Yanmar, out of the crate from a reputable and reliable local supplier being about $6,800 and the Bukh, from a likewise reputable and reliable local supplier, being about $5,000 including shipping from Denmark. By the way, there are two ways to get something from Denmark to the United States; either by ship or by air and it costs about twice as much to air ship than float it. I happened to have ordered the engine about the time Europe takes an annual month-long holiday so it took about 6 total weeks to get the engine here. Patience, I found out, is a key to surviving this kind of project! If I reshaft the boat so I can swing a larger, fixed-pitched wheel, the cost will be about $1,200-$1,500. If I toss in a reversible, self-feathering prop, add another approximately $1,200 to that cost. As to the original budget, I went over the budget roughly $300 – at my request – to fabricate an easily managed fuel system manifold so as to better accommodate two 12.5 gallon fuel tanks, some new fuel lines and some assorted nick-nacks. I worked with a reputable supplier here in the Houston area – Alexander/Ryan Marine and Safety Co., -- who has an excellent sales, support and maintenance staff and Casey Bergin at Mockingbird Marine in Seabrook, Texas, on the installation. Words escape me in expressing my satisfaction with their expertise, interest in my project, caliber of high-quality work and ability to work well within and stick to the budget at hand. Anyone con-sidering a project like this has my most earnest recommendation to talk with either Bob Kahak at Alexander/Ryan or Bergin at Mockingbird Marine during the due diligence portion of a project of this type. Well, that should be about it as an overview of this project and how it might interest other H30 owners considering a repower. If I can offer any other advice, comment or help, please feel free to contact me at bhowie@txucom.net. -- end --