New to Yachting - Fuel Level

Only you can answer that question. Depends on the people and if they are reasonable with water use or not. Some can take a shower and only use a small amount of water where others can use a ton. Also depends if your heads use fresh water or have the ability to use seawater.

Or whether you're in charge... or the guests are running the ship.

It's easy enough to mandate "navy" showers... and guests who ignore that can easily be excluded from future visits or even put ashore (in lieu of immediate keel-hauling.)



-Chris

We are on the Chesapeake Bay and know nothing about Mobile so.....
Around here anything over, say 60 feet, might have problems getting transient slips or even permanent slips.
50 ft is about perfect so you don't end up on the fuel pier or the pump out pier overnight or constantly on a Tee head. It also opens up a whole lot more destinations that can accommodate you.

THIS depends. Remember you need a thru hull below the water line and one above the water line for it. If you don't have either it can add to the expense considerably to have the boat hauled and blocked. Also pricing depends on watermaker size, and access to everything.

Fuel polishing should be an easy and "mandatory" addition to any system. Polishing filtration systems can be used for all fuel transfers tank to tank, they can be used to help prime engines during filter changes, etc, and they can be used periodically to circulate fuel and remove moisture during long idle periods. Keep your tanks clean.

They re nice to have but unless the boat sits for months at a time, they re not really needed. Diesels return a lot of fuel to the tanks so they automatically polish the fuel in the tanks.

I d rather have dual racors so you always have a fresh one ready to go than a polishing system

one thing I consider a must are electric priming pumps.

But this is my setup...started with an electric pump to use for priming all of the engines. Discharge needed a manifold to direct fuel to E1, E2, E3, E4. So added an additional discharge port to direct fuel back to the fuel return manifold. Installed a dedicated Racor 1000 in front of the pump. Now I can use this to prime or polish or transfer. Suction side as its own manifold for tank selection for suction side.

I agree that I'm not really a candidate for the polishing given the use, but given 2600 gals on hand, when I transfer I want to be sure I am not contaminating a tank that I know to be good with fuel from a tank that may have issues delivered by an unknown fuel source dockside. Note, I always try to fuel at a port where I can take a full load from a truck.

Indeed it doesn’t hurt to have a racor on the transfer pump.

in all fairness in all these years and tens of thousand of gallons all over the place incl Bahamas I ve never had a contaminated load

I haven't been as fortunate. Outcome is that I developed a plan to handle it as well as to hopefully avoid it.

That’s why i like having twin racors. One clogs,
Flip a valve and you re on the way.