20 May 2014

Lil’ Diamond III visited Ilion today. We saw her down river on Friday. She is a Canal Tour boat that gives hour long tours of the canal around Lock 18.

She came in for Gas and Water. What impressed me the most when she sailed by on her way to the dock that she is powered by a pair of Honda 250 HP outboard engines (the 4 strokes even in that size are very quiet).

I chatted with the Captain and the crew. According to the Captain it’s the largest passenger vessel in the US that uses outboard engines. With it’s flat/pontoon shaped hull it draws 12″ in the bow and about 18″ in the stern when loaded. Top speed with people aboard is about 11 knots, empty she will do 14 knots.

She has two 80 gal tanks and runs about a week on a full load. Overall she gets about 2 miles per gallon on her cruises.

The Captain was nice enough to let me walk around and take pictures. The three shots of the pilot house show the center wheel and then the docking controls in the starboard side wing. (In the photo the Captain is standing at the wing station.

It has thrusters to make docking easier, but the Captain and the Crew said Lil’ Diamond was a handful in any kind of wind.

When they took off down the river, you could just hear the Honda 4 strokes purring along.