Idiot with 2200 litres of diesel runs out of fuel, nearly
Catmojo
Matt
Mon 3 May 2021 19:40
Have you ever run out of fuel? Last time (before this) for me was on a French autoroute, swooshing along in a fabulously overpowered Mercedes with dashboard displaying words to the effect "fuel distance remaining 1 mile", but obviously hah, those things are always wrong aren't they? Not on a Merc they aren't. Very fortunately, I glided to a halt at a emergency telephone box amid much hooting of horns from ze previously-overtaken frenchies who zipped past in speedy delight. Is there a French word for Schadenfreude? I paid the man in the orange van for his darned expensive fuel, and was on my way within the hour.
Not quite such plain sailing (sic) on a boat. I've arrived at the Canaries at least 24hours before the northerlies set in, but only with enough fuel for well, not quite sure, at least 8 hours I reckon, possibly 24 hours, maybe, which is easily enough to hack back up to Lanzarote from overshooting it a bit .... but not enough to tramp confidently across to Lanzarote from (here) 300 miles away toot sweet in my normal raffish style. Yeah, I burned it all on the way across. Whoda thought 2200litres of diesel wasn't enough? Dang!
Running out of fuel while trying to outrun 20-25 knot northerlies with all the Canaries to the south would be well, ooh, bit more actually serious than Robert Rubbish-sailing-movie Redford i think, although I binned his silly "All Is Lost" film after the first 30 stupid minutes. Whatever, I defintely need to be able to use the motors once closer to Lanzarote... so I daren't use the remaining fuel now, so I gotta hang around and tootle northwards0.
Thus I have been twirling around awaiting the northerly wind to replace the easterly wind, and the boat and wind directions can be swapped: I can go east with a northerly wind, due (they say) sometime Tuesday morning, hum. Northerly winds tend to be a bit Costco style in the Atlantic: always available but only in large quantities. So when the northerly wind DOES arrive, I need to use it to cross over to Lanzarote and THEN I need to duck out of it in the south of Lanzarote and all that is best done with an engine, really. Probably/possibly doable with no motor but it's a bit ooer, dice throwing. Flinging the engine on at the right time is the brakes, really, the way to jump off the southbound roller coaster and home free into the Lanza Gap. So I'm looking after the fuel, waiting the wind, hack over there, engines on all ok. And NOT engine-rumble thataway and then oops no fuel and oops loadsa wind eek.
Did you do anything useful on Monday? I didn't. I wafted around north of the Canary Islands. Still, I wasn't going to do anything more useful in the Canary Islands than eat sushi and drink honey rum, and there's been a shortage of people doing that of late. Tralah!