Buying Fuel!

Today we bought diesel to replace the fuel consumed on our passage to the Galapagos. You might think that all we had to do was to pull up to the fuel dock….wrong!

Ecuador subsidizes fuel so that locals buy diesel for 1.00 per gallon. If you have a local buy you fuel and you get caught you’ll have to deal with a nasty fine. The price for international guests is 4.98 per gallon. We had two choices to buy fuel. When we checked in the port captain was asked to clear us for 75 gallons of fuel. It was assumed that our agent would deliver our fuel to the boat in 10 gallon containers for a price of 6.00 per gallon. However, you can go to the port captain directly and get a fuel voucher or you can take your chances and go to the gas station yourself and pay the going international rate. Not only does the agent charge and extra buck per gallon but he has a reputation of delivering less than your agreed upon amount and there is no way to confirm that you’re being shorted. With this in mind I decided to purchase the fuel myself.

You can’t leave your dinghy at the dock or the Sea Lions will bask and poop in it so Nancy took me to shore in our dink with 5 6 gallon jerry cans. I paid a cab to take me the few miles to the station where with some persuasion they filled all the tanks without the port captain’s voucher. Meanwhile, Nancy fought off a Sea Lion that was considering our dinghy for a nap. She then picked me up at the dock and we then transferred the fuel into our tanks. When I got back to the dock for the second run, I discovered that the gas station was going to close in 5 minutes so the cab put the pedal to the metal and we arrived at the station with just enough time to get in under the deadline. The fellow at the gas station combined my original purchase with the second thirty gallons and wrote out a single bill that with my passport, and boat name was filed with the port captain. Now we are 60 gallons heavier and avoided the extortion from our agent.

Tomorrow we become tourists

Bye from the crew of Always Saturday