Diesel Drums

Need fuel? No problem. Just go to the nearest gas station and fill up. Just a few minutes and you’re all done, right?

Hah.

We’ve bought more diesel in the last 2 months than we have in the last year. Regular gas stations by the water are few and far between (2 in Marquesas, 1 in Tuamotus), but when you don’t need much fuel that’s not a big problem. We even managed to take the boat alongside when we were in Tahiti.

And then there’s Gambiers. There’s no fuel station on this island, or in the whole archipelago. Well, actually, there is, but they haven’t figured out how to actually get diesel or gasoline TO the fuel station (there’s a litany of rules and regulations around fuel trucks and fire responders and the need for everyone to be certified, and there’s no money for a fuel truck and the fire truck lives at the airport, which is a ferry ride away across the lagoon, and the whole endeavor to build a fuel station feels like a short story in the making . . .) Someone has to get fuel - there are cars and trucks here, brand new Ford pickup trucks, by the way, but at least there’s more than 5 miles of roadway, which is more than we can say for other places we’ve been where there are also cars and trucks . . .

How do you get diesel?

*What does YOUR fuel station look like?*

You buy a 55 gallon (200 liter) barrel from the supply ship and spend the morning pumping it into jerry cans, that’s how. Did I mention you need to buy a full barrel?

*Load all the jerry jugs into the dinghy . . .*

A neighboring boat had posted on What’sApp that they needed fuel and did anyone want to go in on it with them? They’d sailed here from Panama and were out of fuel, though their fuel gauge was broken and they had no real idea how much they needed; the hunch was that they’d need at least 300 liters.

The morning the ship came in, they went ashore and paid for 2 barrels. Jeremy went in with them to help with the transfer process - good thing, as how do you get fuel out of a steel barrel when there’s no pump supplied? He brought in our shaker siphon hose and the 4 jerry jugs we carry, plus one additional we’d borrowed from a friend.

“We might need all of the fuel in both barrels,” Adrien said. “There might be 20 liters left for you.”

This was less than we’d hoped for, but something is better than nothing. After the morning of work, during which they’d dealt with one of the 2 barrels, Jeremy came home with 2 jerry cans of fuel, which he added to our tank. 40 liters of fuel, check.

About 30 minutes later, I had a text. “Do you know of anyone who needs fuel?” They had overflowed their tank. No need for that additional 200 liters after all. But they’d paid for it . . .

We offered to take another 80 liters, which would top us off. They did manage to find others to take the rest.

*Tipping the barrel on its side, being careful to keep the opening at the top*

Another couple of hours of transferring fuel from the dented, red steel barrel, turning it onto its side when the level in the barrel got too low for the shaker siphon hose to reach.

*Getting ready to restart the hose flow*

120 liters (about 30 gallons) of diesel later, Calypso has full diesel capacity once again. It only took 5 hours, a lot of jiggling of a hose, 22 jerry jugs, three dinghy runs, and some coordination.