Carver Owners Forum

Hi, all! Last season (2019) we bought a beautiful 1993 390 CPMY. We'd been out of boating for a few years, the last being a 1979 35" Viking. This summer, with Covid, our Carver was truly a blessing as a safe getaway....truly a home away from home.

This lovely boat is perfect for us, but does not have a genset. I did not use the genny on our Viking much, but it certainly came in handy every now and then (When we sold the boat the Crusaders had 1300 hours, the Kohler less than 400.) We do most of our boating here locally for outings in the Detroit waters, but have thoughts about longer trips next summer, Lakes Huron, Erie, maybe even over to Lake Michigan. The boat will be stored indoors, but in the water, this winter, as she was last winter. Likely will come out for a few days in the spring for a bottom paint and transducer install; we've actually never seen the bottom of this boat. She was at the Detroit Yacht Club when we bought her in June of 2019. We moved her just north of Detroit into Lake St Clair both last season and this season, and the same is planned for 2021.

Thoughts on whether it would be an insurmountable project to install a generator?

-where did an OEM genny fit in this boat? It has Crusaders under the floor in the salon. I don't see how anything else would fit in there and still leave room for my mechanic(or me) to work.
-the electrical panel is labelled, but no switch, just a plug to fill the spot
-used or new, and cost?

Glenn

your 390 is pretty much the same as my 98 355 but with the cockpit. My genset is in the center of the boat starting near the front of the engines and ending forward of the engines. If it wasn't there, engine service would be much easier.
If you want to add one, you would really want to use it. I believe a new unit is about 12 k these days. Add probably another 5k for the install if not replacing an existing unit. You need the wiring, transfer switch, thru hull water intake, muffler, through hull exhaust, battery, fuel lines etc.
If you don't expect to use it often, maybe stow a little Honda Gen? It wont run your a/c but would do pretty much everything else for about a $1000.00

Gas or diesel?

The cost of the genny plus install is going to be quite substantial. You'll definitely get a portion of that back on sale, plus your market of buyers would be a bit larger as some would rule your boat out without a genset.

That said, you really need to understand what your potential usage would be. Most gensets go bad from underuse and you have yet more maintenance items and something taking up a substantial amount of the free space in the engine room.

You might also consider adding an inverter and fairly large dedicated battery bank. You could even install a dedicated alternator on one (or both) of the engines to recharge the bank. For very limited use, you could just use a portable to recharge it too.

Installing a genset is a decent-size project but not overwhelming. But - you may want to consider some options today. For the minimum $10K-20K you will pay for a genset and install, newer electric options are appealing. I have a friend who just bought an RV that will run the A/C for 10 hours on the battery bank. Lithium batteries are changing the picture - you can a BIG battery bank these days compared to a genset. I think the Kohler 7.3E would be about the smallest gas genset you would want to consider - it comes in at about 300 lbs., with the similar diesel 8EOZD coming in around 500 lbs.

For a 300 lb. weight, you can install 1,000 Amp Hours of Lithium Ion batteries! That will give you a LOT of run time, even with an A/C unit running. In your part of the country, you probably don't run both A/C units nonstop like summer in FL or TX, so you could likely get a pretty easy 10-12 hours of runtime before you even challenged the battery bank. Li-Ion batteries also have a flat voltage curve, which means they have a steady power output as the battery discharges. The power output will not dramatically drop like similar sized Lead Acid batteries. Inverter prices have come down a lot, and if you figure $800 to $1000 for every 100 AH of battery power - it makes the battery option very cost-competitive.

The batteries will charge whenever you run the mains, and you could add a high output or dedicated alternator if you wanted for charging the battery bank more quickly. No worries about fumes or noise, and really no maintenance. If you have a hardtop, you could cover it with a solar array and help charge the batteries during the day with sunlight.

The boating world is going through a big change now relating to electrics! For example, the Super Air Nautique GS22E is a new electric ski-surf boat running on electric power - no gas engine! I know of 2 cruiser owners who are now changing out gas propulsion engines for electric motors - this can make a lot of sense, depending on how the boat is used.