Some narrowboat enthusiasts profess to love the musical strains of a diesel engine chugging away for hour after hour. Well, there’s no accounting for taste. Our aim in specifying the equipment for Zinfandel, however, has been to minimise noise.
The engine we chose, the Beta Marine PropGen, is fitted inside an acoustic box below the rear deck. This cuts out most of the noise it makes.
Even with a quiet engine, many narrowboats are still quite noisy because of vibrations in the exhaust system. On Zinfandel we have a solution to this problem too, in the form of an enclosed hospital grade silencer.
You can carry on a conversation on deck while cruising along. Occasionally we have trouble with rowing boats running into us – they expect the engine noise to tell them when a motor boat is ahead, but they can’t hear ours!
Once the cooking is finished in the evening, you don’t need to run the PropGen except maybe to boil a kettle. There should be plenty of energy stored in the batteries after a day’s cruising to keep the other electrical appliances on board (the fridge, television, toilet and so on) running happily till morning. Zinfandel can also make use of shore power when moored at a marina where a power connection is provided.
