Topping Up
30 January 2025 | West Palm Beach
Stuart Letton

We were in West Palm Beach last week, home of millionaires, billionaires and "yer man", the primary contributor to the interestingly named "Truth Social" - The Donald.
Us peasants anchor out in the fairway that includes the Intra Coastal Waterway. The squillionaires keep their boats in one of the many marinas lining the shores. It's not as convenient being out at anchor but at $5.50 to $8.00 per foot, per day it's a lot cheaper. It's also quieter, well away from the exhaust noises of the Lamborghinis, Maybach Mercs and Hummers.
Regular readers might have seen me write about the "St Martin Navy", the rafts of super yachts that inhabit the St Martin lagoon during the cruising season in the Caribbean. Well, now we know where they come from, West Palm Beach.
We could take all the boats out of our three largest marines on the Clyde, perhaps numbering more than two thousand decent-sized sailing boats and there still wouldn't be enough room to park all the super yachts and sport fishing boats.
In need of topping up our diesel tanks, we dinghies into the fuel dock, armed with our two, twenty-litre Jerry Cans.
"Will you fill me up please".
"Sure", said the smartly uniformed marina man. "Once I've filled this guy." Ahead of us, dwarfing our little rubber dinghy, was a seventy-foot or so sport fishing boat. You know, these very rakish looking powerboats with forty or fifty feet of scaffolding above the deck, from which lofty, swaying perch they can steer towards the game fish they're chasing ..... or vomit on the crew below.
We sat and sat and sat as the wide-bore diesel pump filled this guy. Five thousand gallons of diesel!
No wonder fish is so expensive.