This morning before our departure from Panama we filled up the fuel tanks aboard Warbird to the top. On paper, the boat can hold 6800 gallons of diesel fuel. Today will filled up to just shy of 6700 gallons. Normally we don’t have a need to fill the tanks all the way to the top. With our low fuel consumption it usually isn’t nessesary. Due to the nature of the Galapagos trip we wanted to get as much fuel aboard as possible. This is because we want to avoid the need to fuel in the Islands. They do have fuel available, but it is quite expensive and a hassle to bring aboard. We will plan to make the trip to the Islands, complete a two week cruise, then make the trip back and refuel upon our return to Panama. During this time we will cover over 2500 Nautical miles. We will also be running our generators 24 hours a day for the next 5 weeks. The generators can burn up to 48 gallons per day under heavy load. Overall we should have plenty of fuel to complete this trip. I anticipate that we should still have over 2000 gallons remaining in the tanks when we return to Panama. We are currently cruising at 900 RPM and making 7.5 kts. Fuel burn per hour is 7 gallons total! Not Bad!

Fuel barge in Panama!

Ricky manning the fuel hose.