Fuelling around the world

Created by webmaster. Last modified on 2002-08-18 18:17:20
Topic: Cruising Information

After two years while sailing with Jimmy Cornell's Millennium Odyssey Canarias round the world rally (1998-2000) we have experienced the following fueling situations:

In the good old USA we simply pull the boat up to the dock and say fill it up, pay the bill with a credit card or U.S. greenbacks, cast off the lines and sail away.

Not so in most of the rest of the world, here then are some of the very different ways other than our U.S. approach, some of which one would rather avoid if possible.

Bermuda was our first offshore fueling stop and it was similar to any U.S. refueling stop, but with something that we had never experienced. When we approached the fuel dock we had to wait for a ninety-foot luxury sailboat to finish loading his water tanks at the fuel dock so we did circles for the better part of an hour. We found out later that he was running the normally good Bermuda water through a very complex very slow filtration system. The "biggy" eventually departed, and when we finally got to the fuel dock it was a normal Shell gas station on the main road to Georgetown. Here though they fueled automobiles on the street and the back of the station had a dock and so also serviced boats!

Ireland and the UK provided the same type of fueling operation as that which we are accustomed to here in the States, and so not until we got to Madeira and the Canary Islands did things get different. It was in Madeira that they backed a fuel truck out onto the commercial dock where we were rafted off three and four deep and loaded us up. The problem here was that the boats were about ten feet below the top of the pier. So the truck hose which was about four inches in diameter and fifty foot long with oily sludge incasing it had to be dragged down and over all the rafted up boats. A hose that size full of fuel is heavy to be sure, and so it took a team effort to get the hose out to each boat. The rally members all spent the whole day taking on fuel.

Las Palmas, Grand Canaries was much better for it did have a fuel dock, but there were so many cruising boats there you had to make an appointment. We were Med. moored there so it meant when it came to be our time we had to cast off the stern lines and pull up our bow anchor as we left the queue to go to the fuel dock. Its not too bad leaving but after the fueling you must reverse the whole process and get back into the line of moored boats, backwards of course.

The Cape Verde Islands are very poor, but it had a first class boat fueling system. You simply pulled up along side a fuel lighter or barge at anchor in the middle of the harbor, and they would fill you up on the spot. They first filled a quart glass bottle with fuel labeled with our boat name, the date, the batch number, and handed the bottle to you for your inspection and to have in case of any problems with the fuel appeared later on the voyage. This was fine fuel, and with us looking at an Atlantic crossing to Brazil we were glad to get that quality fuel. Unfortunately something we ate at the last party that the city threw for us was not of the same high standards as the fuel, and the entire fleet left with the runs to the head disease.

Rio de Janeiro was a normal dockside fueling location, but Jimmy Cornell's new boat had an unusual fueling incident while there. When his friend Eric was fueling the boat up to head for Argentina one of the fuel hoses had come off a fitting so he pumped the whole volume of the tank into the bilge. Oh! Shucks he said, for this man is cool. He reconnects the hose and with a borrowed small pump he pumps the spilled fuel from the bilge back into the tank. He said he filtered it, but even if not Jimmy's bilge was spotless anyway. So with no harm done and with a strong diesel odor in the boat off they went to sea.

In Port Stanley in the Falklands they brought the fuel down to the dock in a big fuel tank truck which should have been easy except the hose nozzle was the same diameter as the fill hole. Even with a funnel, the fuel came out so fast that we had blowbacks, belches, and a mess in general on the deck and on myself as well. The fuel dock its self was unique as well for it was the stern half of a three hundred-year-old wooden square-rigger from days of old, when ships were ships and men were men they said.

Puerto Williams in Chile is the most southerly town in the world, and had one of the simplest systems for fueling in the world as well. The fuel station, which was Mobil Oil by the way, borrowed someone?s pickup truck. Then loaded a fifty five-gallon drum in the back of it, filled it half full, and drove it to the Porto Williams Club Naval. Club Naval was an old Second World War ammunition ship that was aground and half full of water resting quite level in a small lagoon. The trick here was to get the drum down off the truck without a ramp, then down a small ten-foot incline to the narrow wooden bridge over the water, a span of about twenty feet on to the fore-deck of the ship. We were tied up to the far side of the ship down about eight or ten feet from the deck. That was good for they stood the drum on end, ran a hose down to the boat tank fill inlet, and siphoned the fuel out of the drum into my tank. It was neat and clean with just a small wait while all this was accomplished. We were quite short of fuel so it took four trips to the fuel station to top us up. We had some seven hundred miles of the Chilean canals to run mostly against the wind to get to the next fuel stop. So with my friend Roland's help we managed to find one eight-gallon plastic jerry can, but we knew that was not going to be enough to augment the one hundred fifteen gallons we had on board. We solved this dilemma when we found a big blue plastic barrel behind the Chilean Navy storehouse. We did a little fast talking a got one of the Navy radio operators to come with us to see if we could buy it. When Lieutenant Marco Vega saw what we were asking for he laughed out loud and said, "I give you a special dispensation, you may have this barrel at no cost". This thirty gallon big blue barrel saved our skin for when we arrived in Port Eden Seven-hundred windy rough sea miles later we had about twelve gallons left in the tank.

Puerto Eden sounds like it should be paradise doesn't it? Well we were glad to get there safe and sound but this was probably the hardest place to get fuel in the whole trip. First there was no dock that we could get to so we had to put our three small six gallon jerry cans in the dinghy and row them about a football field to shore. Climb up the stony shore with my tanks, walk across the Town Street, really the town boardwalk, to the little general store there. I knew it was the right place for it had about fifty, fifty five-gallon drums sitting on end in the front yard.

The Millennium Rally people had made arrangements for this fuel to be delivered there knowing that few of the boats could make it even another fifty miles to the next Port with a regular fuel dock. The manager of the store gets me started with a hand rotary fuel pump that you stick down into the open bunghole and you begin hand pumping. I had pre signed up for one hundred fifty gallons, and so I started pumping it into my five jerry cans. After all were filled, I then carried them back to the small dock. With a rope tied to a jerry jug lowered them one at a time into the dinghy eight feet below. Once loaded I rowed the dinghy to the boat, put the jerry cans up on the deck aboard the boat, dumped the contents into the fuel tank and went back for more. This whole procedure took at least an hour for each round trip. This went on for two days, but before I was half done three young local kids came out in their rowboat and helped lug the cans back and fourth for me. For their efforts Lois gave them all baseball caps and our little give-away flashlights for their efforts.

Not too far up the Chilean canals from Eden we stopped at a larger town for food, fuel, and a little sight -seeing. We anchored amongst a very big fleet of fishing boats in about thirty feet of water. In that the anchorage was so crowed with fairly big boats we didn't let out much chain on the anchor. We rowed ashore a short distance and tied the dingy to the stern of a fishing boat some sixty foot long that had been hauled up on the beach for repairs. In that we had filled our tanks in Eden we only took two jerry cans with us to be filled at the corner gas station.

We left the filled tanks at the station and proceeded to walk on into a very nice clean village to do some sightseeing. We found many things of interest and even bought some stuff to bring home to our grandchildren.

On the way back to the boat we spotted a cozy little restaurant and stopped for a short lunch, well we thought it would be short, but it turned into about two hours instead. So it was probably almost five hours by the time we picked up our fuel cans and headed back to the boat.

Hey! Our dinghy has been moved, we both proclaim as we arrive at the beach. Well it?s a good thing that some one had moved it for the tide has come in and the fishing vessel that we had tied the dingy to was at least fifty feet out into the water now.

OK! some nice local fisherman had pulled our dink up to the now water's edge, or one of us was going to have to swim out to retrieve the thing. So we load the fuel cans and other goodies into the Dink and rowed back out to the boat.

Hey! Some one has moved Que Sera too. What's going on now? Soon we see it's tied up to two fishing boats rafted together several yards from where we had left it at anchored.

One of the fishermen called over to us as we boarded our floating home, and said that he had caught it as it was drifting out to sea with the tide. Oh the tide, we must have anchored at low tide and when the generous tide of about fifteen feet came in, into shore went our dingy, and out to sea went our Que Sera.

The next interesting place to get fuel was at Juan Fernandize Island or what was once called Robinson Crusoe Island. This was a little out of the way for us as we were sailing to French Polynesia, but the favorable currents and steady trade winds were supposed to go very near past the island. It turns out that they didn't, or if they did, they didn't have much effect, for we had to motor a lot of the way to get there.

So of course when we motor we must get fuel whenever we can get it, therefore we stopped in the little cove that was the harbor of the island to see if any was available. As soon as we got near the harbor a small motor boat came out from shore to direct us where to anchor, and asked if we needed anything as well.

Sure we need fuel was our reply, and then after hearing that they had Lobsters to sell we certainly needed some of them as well. Getting the Lobsters was easy but the fuel was another one of those, to see it is to believe it stories. The next morning s small wooden boat comes out to our boat, and picks us up, and takes us and all of our empty jerry cans to the big town wharf.

We proceed into the small village to the Chilean Navy Office. Well really we go behind the office into the overgrown grassy back yard. There our guide, who speaks very little English takes the cap off the one and only fifty-five gallon drum there, and starts to siphon the fuel out of the Navy drum into my jerry cans.

This guy doesn't look Navy He doesn't talk Navy, plus he's smoking a cigarette while handling the fuel. Now I'm looking back over my shoulder while he?s doing his thing with the fuel. I've got one eye on the Navy office, one on the cigarette, and my other eye on the gate to get out of the place in a hurry. It?s times like these that one needs several eyes to see what's going to happen next.

The Gambier Islands (Mangareva) in French Polynesia was interesting as well for they actually had a dock to come along side of to get fuel. The price was the highest priced yet, and the dock was only a crumbly old concrete thing that just was waiting to tear up your fenders or worse yet your hull-sides. There was no fuel pump on the dock either. They brought the fuel down to the dock in the back of a pickup truck in fifty-five gallon barrels.

They, I say they, for there were about five men involved in the operation to transfer the fuel with an old hand crank pump. The pump broke five minutes after starting, but another even older looking one appeared, some how, from somewhere, which did work. So we did get about one hundred gallons of good but costly French fuel.

Tahiti was easy for we were tied stern to the big city front wall, and they just backed a big tanker truck up behind everyone and with a hose big enough to fill a fuel tank of a gas station, and began to fill each yacht along the line. Getting the fuel to the boat was easy but filling the fuel tank with fuel was yet another challenge. The nozzle was three inches in diameter and so would not fit into my one and onehalf inch fill hole. My funnel was not deep enough to hold the tremendous gusher that issued forth each time I gently squeezed the trigger. Needless to say I had a little spillage before that operation was over.

Tonga was come along the dockside Shell Oil fuel station, but it could fuel only one yacht at a time and the whole fleet of our rally boats we trying to fuel up before going to a Med. mooring location across the harbor. This caused much waiting in line before doing the Med. mooring procedure.

Cairns, Australia was just like any fine marina in the US with a new floating dock upon which was located three fueling pumps with the regular sized hose and nozzle for filling a yacht fuel tank.

Darwin was unique for we were tied up stern to the dock, inside a lock due to the sixteen-foot tidal range. There were large signs everywhere stating that it was unlawful to discharge or spill fuel or other toxic materials into the harbor. That?s impossible, especially when the fuel is delivered by one of those big fuel trucks with bigger than big hose nozzles again. In just handling the hose from the dock to the boat at least a quart was dribbled onto the already oily water, not to mention my usual filler fitting back flush and foamy geyser blast.

Bali had a big fuel dock but without the pumps, So the fuel was brought in by fuel truck here as well. Interesting thing here was that there was no fuel truck in sight. The hose from the truck was run from in front of the club house through the men?s shower room across the wood deck of the marina office past a small marina store and then down the dock to the waiting vessel. The first vessel to be fueled when we got there was a ninety five-foot motor boat, and he took the entire contents of the first truck, plus one third of the next one as well. We took on a big load of fuel as well for we had motored a lot in the gentle winds of the Tores Striates. We had even emptied our large blue barrel from Chile as well as all of our jerry cans. We now have lots of them and even bought five more here in Bali. To make room for the smaller more manageable six-gallon jugs we gave away our big blue plastic Chilean barrel that had served us so well.

Yacht Haven Marina, Phuket, Thailand was a new modern marina built by the government, but lacking of any regular facilities. No toilets, no showers, no fuel dock or even fuel pumps just very good docks for stern to boarding and very nice and helpful staff. With no fuel docks it was necessary to have the marina dingy come to the boat, pick up the empty jerry cans, and take them to and older fuel dock a quarter of a mile away. Fortunately we had not used much fuel during the trip up the coast of Malaysia, and so only had four of our seven jerry jugs to fill.

Sri Lanka may be the worst, for an oily film covered the harbor. We tied up to and old rusty work boat, and waited long hours for a fuel truck to show up with another big nozzle. Come to think of it Sri Lanka was not my favorite place for a lot of reasons.

Cochin India was unique, for we hired a boat boy to bring us fuel from Old Cochin City by jerry cans to us while anchored in the roadstead, in front of a five-star hotel. Really! a 30 something year old man and his assistant a twenty six or so strong guy, came out in a row boat and offered to get us fuel. We agreed to his offer, gave him fifty US dollars and our empty fuel jugs, and off they rowed across the shipping channel to Old Cochin. They returned a couple of hours latter with our jugs full plus three others of dubious quality full of the blackest colored fuel I have ever seen. Yuck! But we but it through our fine mesh filter screen fuel funnel and hoped that it would not clog up our Racor filter on its way to Denny our faithful diesel engine.

The fuel we took on at Maley in the Maldives was delivered to us in a forty foot wooden motor launch that had almost as much fuel covering its decks and floor as it had in it's hold. They came along side us in our anchorage in the crystal clear waters of a large lagoon, and pumped directly into the tank very clean and clear fuel.

The leg from the Maldives to Djibouti was over three thousand miles and so took some very conservative fuel management. We had to motor a little more due to our short waterline length, so we had a mid-sea refueling. We rendezvoused with the Yacht Sea Gem who were sailing along with us, and had been sight of us for five days. We tied two six-gallon plastic jugs to a hundred-foot line, threw them over board, and dragged them behind us across their bow. Saundra the first mate of Sea Gem plucked them up out the sea with her boat hook untied our line, and off we sailed abeam of them for the next two hours. Sir Charles, our moniker for Charley the superb captain of Sea Gem, disappeared below to the engine room to siphon fuel from his big tanks into my Jerry cans, good fuel to be sure for now it had been filtered twice. Sir Charles after finally emerging from the hot and very humid engine room, lowered the two now full fuel cans back into the water on a long line behind him, and it was our turn to fish them back aboard while being towed along at five knots. They were heavy but we did manage to struggle them back on deck, and off both boats sailed to the east, really pleased with our accomplishment as night began to fall on the Indian Ocean.

It was certainly a good thing we took on the extra fuel, for just three days later we made a seventy-mile detour, towing the disabled forty foot sail boat Santana into Yemen. After the tow we certainly needed to top up our fuel and the Arab resident who acted as our entry agent into the port also acted as our fuel provider. All three boats of our party took our jerry jugs ashore by dinghy and piled them on the sea wall to be filled. We had arrived just before noon, but as dark fell our empty jugs were still to be seen on the wall. On or about nine thirty that night there came a knock on the hull, subsequently awaking us from our deep slumber to announce that the our fuel was now here. OK! OK! even in our pajamas we were glad to get fuel to fill our mostly empty tanks.

Port Sudan, in Sudan was interesting for we did not wish to spend the three days required to clear into and then back out of the country so we were not allowed to go ashore from our boats in the anchorage. A local man in a small outboard boat offered to get fuel for us from the fuel station a few miles away, so at once we off loaded our seven jerry jugs into his boat. Our fuel returned several hours later, and we invited the Sudanese man who delivered it aboard for cocktails and horsd'oeuvers. This invitation to the local man was very educational for he spoke very good English as he had lived in England for nine years, and we learned much about Sudan politics, plus the plight that the people there are in under the present ruler.

I will end this fueling episode with us finally being able to reduce the number of our jerry cans from seven down to the two we bought in Bermuda at Agios Nikolaos on the Greek island of Crete. For now we would be island hopping in the Aegean, and would be able to top up our main tank at the many marinas along the way.

So after thousands of sea miles of having fuel jugs lashed to the rails we now have clean uncluttered decks, and our water line is once again showing itself. The moral of this story is that if your planning to go long distance cruising, your yachts main fuel tanks are not big enough, and jerry jugs strapped to the rail are required. So start your trip with several good quality containers in the USA where they are of good quality and easy to find. Case in point we delivered two of our full jerry cans one night to a ninety foot Swan that had run all but out of fuel. All of the vessels in our Millennium Rally, but one were forced to purchase extra fuel containers; the one exception was the big Swan of course.

Don Babson S/V Que Sera Sera.