Baudouin gets bigger

The company claims that this development leads to a commonality of components that allows the price to be kept low and spares to be readily available.

The history of Baudouin stretches back to the beginning of the 20th century when the company was building rugged engines for the French fishing boat fleet. The philosophy of building rugged low speed diesels continued until quite recently when the decision was made to widen the market for the Baudouin diesels with the latest generation of their engines being aimed at the higher speed markets such as ferries and planing workboats.

The M26.3 series of engines is the latest addition to the Baudouin range. The six cylinder version is a 16 litre diesel that is available in a variety of versions to suit different applications. Its most powerful version is the P3 which can produce 815 hp at 2100 rpm with the lowest power version designed for continuous use in displacement boats running at 1600 rpm and producing just 450 hp.

The 12 cylinder engine, the 12 M26.3 comes close to producing double the power of the 6 cylinder unit with its maximum of 1650 hp coming 2300 rpm and at the lower speed of 1600 rpm the power is 1100 hp.

Particular attention has been paid to accessibility and servicing in the design of these engines with all the items such as filters and fillers readily accessible. Better reliability is also ensured by having all of the accessories such as the water and fuel pumps and the alternator drive by gears rather than with a belt drive. These engines come with extended service interval requirements so that maintenance is reduced to a minimum.

The engines feature electronic injection and they are turbo-charged and inter-cooled to modern standards. The emissions from the engines meet the IMO Tier III standards and they can meet the requirements of most classification societies.

One of the latest installations of these engines is in the 30 metre ferry Santorini which is based in Greece. This vessel has two of the 12 cylinder Baudouin diesels installed, each one producing 1200 hp at 1950 rpm to give the ferry a speed of 25 knots. Following the fishing boat tradition, a 25 metre sardine boat in Angola has a 12 cylinder unit installed producing 1000 hp plus two Baudouin powered generator sets.

By Dag Pike