Friday, February 3rd 2023. Musings on diesel and victory - Weebles will launch tomorrow.
I spent the day calibrating the sight gauges for the fuel tanks, at least the first 100 gallons of the 400-500 gallon capacity of the twin saddle tanks. Willard spec’d tankage to be 500 gallons, but truth is, I don’t know what the absolute capacity is. I believe it’s in the neighborhood of 450-gallons.
I’ve decided that calibrating fuel tanks is really an owner’s task, sort of like packing your own parachute. I have four 20-liter (5.3 gal) fuel jugs but I really want the calibration in gallons, not liters. So I had each filled to 19-liters (5-gals). With four jugs and a goal of 100-gals marked in 10-gal increments, result was an all-day event to get pesos, get fuel, haul fuel, load fuel, mark sight gauge, rinse/repeat. I was pretty careful but my jeans still had a slight diesel odor yesterday evening. Ah….the bachelor life! Seat-up!
Since this list is overwhelmingly male, I'll digress a bit: I sorta like the smell of diesel impregnated Levis. I wouldn’t admit if Cheryll were here, but I do. I’m reminded of the scene in Apocalypse Now
“I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.” Most folks know that line – but a few sentences later, Duval says
“You know why I like the smell? It smells like Victory!” In a small way, diesel-jeans means victory for me too.
scene from Apocalypse Now
PICTURES - a bit lean today
1. The Mysterious Leak. Recall, after heavy rain, a small mount of water accumulated in the engine room. Identification and cure has been elusive – Alberto was sure it was from the flybridge (I was not confident). While I was siphoning diesel into the portside deck-fill, I had some time to let my mind wander. The Shore Power inlet is forward on the port side (see picture below) and it caught my eye that it didn’t look like there was any bedding. Turns out there wasn’t – but here’s the rub: This is not a Hack Team screw-up, it was a La Costa install. Alberto will do a fire-hose test tomorrow but I’m hopeful the leak is found. Fingers crossed.
2. Fueling at the Arco Station. Finding a station with diesel was a bit more difficult than anticipated - I'd guess less than 10% of the service stations have diesel. Diesel was remarkably expensive - $4.75/gal (USD). Price of gas/diesel seems to lag US by about a 2-3 months so it's now at a peak. I bought 100 gals yesterday in five batches which took about 6-hours total (including a run for pesos).
When I left San Francisco back in the Trump administration, my fuel was really dodgy - smelled like linseed oil, and looked like Myers Rum. As someone on my diesel-in-water-tank thread said, sometimes "dilution is the solution." So I bought a small siphon and found that putting on fuel this way was much less messy, albeit pretty slow.
So why not just put on enough fuel to get to a fuel dock, especially since its about the same price? Several reasons. First, my hope is I can get the 50-gals per side more accurate with a short hose and such. Second, I should be at 20%-25% full so can get an ideal on trim. Finally, with 50-gals on each side, I can easily transfer and filter fuel and mark each tank to 100-gals.
