Friday 20 May 2016

Extra Fuel and Water

One of the big questions akin to 'how much gas will I need to take' looms over us all. How much extra fuel do I need to carry and how much extra water should I carry????

Fuel - we carry approximately 434 litres. Our longest passage is Thursday Island to Tual, 700 nautical miles. If we average 100 nm a day, obviously that's 7 days fuel. We burn approx 4 litres an hour, so with the math done 24 hs * 4 ltr is 96 ltrs. We passage plan on 5nm an hour, so 700 nm is 140 hrs or 5.8 days. Say 6 days is 576 ltrs of fuel.

We have 2 x 20 litre jerry cans for diesel giving us a total of 474 litres. We must sail or we wont have enough fuel and will have to paddle.

Other than the crossing over to Tual we believe by looking at the itinerary we will have ample opportunities to gather diesel. Matilda sails well under her spinnaker so we don't foresee any problems.

Diesel (Solar in Indonesia) is available, but do yourself a favour and buy a good filter before you fill your tanks and good diesel conditioner.



Water - we carry approximately 420 liters. We have two 20 litres jerry cans, one 8 litre canvas bag and two 10 litre black shower bags. Matilda also has a Spectra water maker fitted and can make 50 - 53 litres of water an hour. As an extra back up we have made a water catcher from a tarp that we can string out over the front that will funnel water directly into the tanks via a hose set up.

Again, we feel this will be sufficient while cruising Indonesian waters.




1 comment:

  1. The rally organisers, David and Dewi, are very good at making sure fuel is available which is normally brought out to your boat in jerry cans. Make sure you have a good filter to pour through as it goes in your tank. You will use more fuel than you think because winds are notoriously light and fickle in Indonesia. We motored most days when we were on the rally in 2011. Cheers.

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