The Island Eagle Engine Room
The engine room on Island Eagle is a joyous place.
Let's start with the entrance. On the starboard side deck, just aft of the door to the galley, a companionway leads down to the engine room. The companionway contains the shore power inlet and isolation transformer, and also provides access to the back side of the main electrical panel in the galley. This is also a great place to store extra lines, shore power cords, etc. Plus, you can hang your wet gear on the hooks and the warmth from the engine will dry them off
One of the nice features of this boat is that there is normally inside access to the engine room, which keeps heat, noise and fumes from the living areas (there is an emergency door from the midship cabin). Port and starboard in the engine room are twin 1000 gallon tanks, with the engine in between and the generator immediately aft of the port tank. The engine room features full headroom and plenty of space for benches, spares, etc. The engine room has almost 7 feet of headroom and is exceptionally roomy. All floors are bright-varnished marine plywood.
Going down the varnished yellow cedar reveals the beast itself...
The Mighty 6-110 Screamin' Jimmy
The engine is a General Motors 6-110. It's 660 cubic inches and 3000 pounds of brawn. Although this engine went out of production about when Island Eagle was launched, it's a real powerhouse and seems about as tough as a bag of hammers. It's never failed to fire right up, and it runs like a top.
The exhaust system on the Island Eagle was designed by Tad Roberts, and fabricated by Classic Welding. Along the way we ran into a number of difficulties, one of which was the cost of 12 inch diameter aluminum tubing, which Tad has specified as the stack. The least expensive we could fine was almost $200 per foot! However, we were fortunate to find a piece of mast from a tall ship at a local mast builder; this was 13 inches by 10 inches and oval in cross section, and turned out to be perfect.
Fuel is stored in two 1000 gallon tanks port and starboard. For details on how the fuel system works, see Fuel.
Systems & Access
Other systems (12 / 24 / 110 volt electrical, steering, fresh water, grey water) are also situated in the engine room. There are some pictures below, and additional details can be found on the Systems page.
Full gallery below. Hover for caption. Click on any image for enlarged version:
