Trilogy Celebrates World Oceans Day With Boats Powered By Biodiesel
The next time you go snorkeling at Molokini with Trilogy, you’ll have hundreds of pounds of restaurant oil to thank for helping you get there.
For close to a decade, Trilogy has experimented with biodiesel to power a few of our sailing catamarans offering snorkeling tours on Maui.
After years of testing the fuel’s performance on the engines, gaskets, and fuel system, both of Trilogy’s Ma'alaea-based vessels (Trilogy I and Trilogy II) are now completely powered by biodiesel that’s sourced right here on Maui.
In collaboration with Pacific Biodiesel—a Maui-based company who just this past week, opened their first biodiesel fueling station at Ma‘alaea Harbor—Trilogy is helping protect our oceans by reducing emissions by 86% over petroleum diesel fuel.
Made from cooking oil, fats, and grease, biodiesel is different than vegetable oil, and it can be used in any diesel engine without any modifications.
It burns cleaner than petrodiesel, offers no lack in performance, and offers comparable fuel economy to diesel that’s sourced from petroleum.
According to Captain Riley Coon—a 3rd generation Trilogy Captain, who also helps organize the Blue ‘Aina reef cleanup program, “one of the most noticeable differences is there isn’t any soot, which means the hulls are cleaner, the engines are cleaners, and our boats aren’t billowing black clouds of smoke when maneuvering inside of the harbor.”
“We’re also helping to remove waste oils from the island, are supporting a local, Maui-based business, and are using biodiesel to replace thousands of gallons of petroleum we’d be burning each year. It keeps jobs and money in the local economy, and I’d love to see it expand even further—maybe to the County bus system.”
Captain Katie agrees, and she says “it’s important for us to be customers of Pacific Biodiesel because it’s locally made, it’s a renewable energy source, it’s better for the environment, and it actually extends the life of our engines.”
This comes nearly 50 years after Trilogy started running sailing tours on Maui using the original biodiesel—wind!—and we still make an effort to sail as much as possible to harness that natural energy.
By transitioning boats over to biodiesel engines, it’s just one small way we can play a part in preserving and protecting our oceans, and minimize any emissions-related impacts to native marine life and corals.
For more information on Pacific Biodiesel visit biodiesel.com, and leave us a comment in the space below if you have any questions about biodiesel and boats—in our mind, it’s a winning combination.
Happy World Oceans Day from the Trilogy ‘ohana—see you out on the water!