Hydraulic start

In my maritime career we always had hydraulic starts installed on the lifeboat diesel. Do any of you run them on your auxiliary diesels on sailboats?

 

Most non-commercial small diesel plants (i.e. lifeboat sized vessels) have no need to expend the complexity and weight on hydraulic or air starting systems because of the need to start the systems often and the lack of other uses/needs for such systems as opposed to the de-rigueur electrical system. Large motor or sail yachts, which have large hydraulic/air systems for other uses, may have hydraulic or air starting systems for their mid-sized diesels.

From a commercial lifeboat perspective, a hydraulic-air accumulator start system make economic and maintenance sense. It can sit years with minimal maintenance (no battery to keep charged); needs only to work once, can be manually recharged if necessary (i.e. the lifeboat passengers have all the time they need to hand pump it back up if they need to re-start).

 

Hydraulic or pneumatic donkey engine starters were the norm on all diesels too big to be cranked by hand many years ago.
Improvements in electrical power systems, mostly better batteries, have made electric start very much the preferred method in modern times.
Your average small to medium sized sailboat motor doesn’t require Herculean efforts to start, and many can be cranked by hand if necessary. Even that is a fading feature, given over to electrical starting.

 

Hi Sea Monkey, some of the older smallish pre electric start diesels had valve lifter / decompression levers, to hand crank the flywheel up to a good speed, then flick off the de-comp lever to start. Electric starter is much easier, and you don't need to lift the engine cover to do it.

 

Hand cranks in small marine engines have disappeared, like kick starts in motorcycles. Better batteries and electric motors are a lot more reliable. I think being able to hand start a small engine in a sailboat is a good safety feature.