Fuel Management for Long Range Cruising
(From: Cruising Currents, the Suncoast Yachts and Charters Newsletter, Summer 1999)

Our goal was to take our GB 46 Classic "Heather K." from San Diego through the Panama Canal and up the Inter-Coastal Waterway to our college stomping grounds of New England. Now that we are retired, we will have plenty of time for gunkholing in the waterways where we grew up. Talk about doing what we've wanted to do since we were kids!

Cruising down the West Coast from Neah Bay, WA, to San Diego, we established a pattern of traveling during the day and tying up at a dock or anchoring in a protected cove at night. That was easy cruising for two persons, and fuel availability was not a problem. Along the coast of Washington, Oregon, and California, there are many anchorages, and fuel is readily available in ports that are no more than 150 miles apart.

From San Diego to the Panama Canal it is a different story. We are still going to stop for the night wherever possible, but there are several long legs where the distance between fueling facilities is a concern. These legs and their approximate mileage are the following:

It is possible to find fuel at intermediate places, but they do not have convenient fueling facilities. They either require that the fuel be delivered by panga (15-20' fishing skiff) in 5-gallon containers or there are long and shallow waterways with difficult beaurocratic procedures that must be overcome to obtain fuel. Between Mexico and Costa Rica there are also countries that have not been very friendly to the American boater, although that appears to be changing.

Fortunately, these legs are in succession, so that we can test our fuel management plan as we progress. To prepare Heather K. for these long passages, we installed Flo-Scan fuel flow meters. We found these to be absolutely necessary for long range cruising. We calibrated them on several short trips and they proved to be accurate to 5% as they came out of the box. We also purchased two 55 gallon fuel barrels and strapped them on the stern deck. These increase our fuel capacity from 600 to 710 gallons. We have a hand operated fuel pump and 1" diameter hoses to transfer the fuel from the drums to the internal tanks while at anchor.

On our earlier trip down the West Coast we had established that Heather K. would use about 10-12 gallons per hour while cruising at 10 knots. This would give us a comfortable range of 600 NM, and with careful fuel management we could go as far as 650 NM without losing too much sleep.

Leaving Ensenada in March, 1999, we put our fuel management plans to the test. We left Ensenada with just the internal tanks filled to 584 gallons. We reached San Quintin the first day. The following day we made an overnight leg to Turtle Bay since we had our daughter as third crewmember to help with the watches. We arrived in Turtle Bay three days after leaving Ensenada.

We refueled in Turtle Bay by med-mooring to the fuel dock and filled the internal tanks and the two drums for a total load of 667 gallons for the trip to Cabo San Lucas. We stayed in Turtle Bay for an extra day of rest and then headed for Punta Abreojos (Bahia Ballenas). We spent a day there relaxing and transferring the fuel from the drums to the now partially emptied internal fuel tanks. Next it was off to San Juanico for an overnight rest and then on to Bahia Santa Maria. This beautiful anchorage is just above Magdalena Bay, and we took the opportunity to spend a day ashore to explore the sandy beach.

The following day we proceeded on the short trip to Magdalena Bay. Here we spent a night and another lazy morning just watching the resident whale that my daughter named "Felipe" after an old friend of ours. The whale kept us interested all morning by swimming lazy circles around our boat while feeding. In the late afternoon we finally pulled anchor for the planned overnight trip to arrive at Cabo early in the morning. That's when the wind and waves are generally the calmest.

We arrived at the famous cape just after dawn to be greeted by the hundreds of boats that were swarming out of the harbor in search of the fishing grounds. Common courtesy and rules-of-the-road were forgotten by several of them as they forced us to change course to avoid collisions, even though they were coming at us from of our port bow.

We had made the comfortable trip from Ensenada to Cabo in eleven days. We stayed in Cabo just long enough to check in and out before heading for La Paz and the Sea of Cortez. The beauty of that area kept us longer than we had planned, so that we would not be able to reach the Panama Canal before the hurricane season set in. As a result, we changed our plans for the year and decided to come back to cruise Northern California and Oregon. The trip through the Panama Canal will have to wait until later.

The trip north, fondly called "The Baja Bash", gave us some exciting moments with seas running 6-9 feet and a 3-4 foot wind chop on top, 50 feet apart, and breaking over the port bow. Even "bashing" our way north we were able to get good fuel economy thanks to the Flo-Scan meters. They provided continuous data on our performance. We called that our "sleep factor".

How good was our fuel management?   No Problema!   The following table shows the results:

It should be noted that these numbers are based on the total fuel consumption and include the fuel used by the 8kW generator and inaccuracies of fuel measurement. They account for approximately 10% of the indicated fuel used.