Fuel ‘Shortages’ at Turtle Bay?

We recently received a letter from Kris and Sandra Hartford of the Edmonton, Canada-based Simpson 417 cutter Nomotos who, shortly after completing a 9-year, 47-day circumnavigation, complained that the El Gordo, Jr. fuel service at Turtle Bay tried to short them on a fuel purchase.

"We ordered exactly 90 gallons of diesel to be delivered by panga to our boat," they wrote. "A delivery slip was presented to us for 337 liters / 90 gallons. A factor of 3.75 on the fuel dock’s liter counter had been used to make the 90 gallon claim. However, the correct factor of 3.7854 yields 89.03 gallons. After loading, we checked our Tank Tender and determined that we had been delivered 82.55 gallons, not 89.03 gallons. That’s a difference of 6.48 gallons or 7.3%. Having used our Tank Tender for some 13 years, we knew it to be reliable and accurate.

 "We brought the discrepancy to the attention of señor Enrique Gerardo Castro, the owner. He steadfastly asserted that his fuel dock counter was 100% accurate.  So we took one of our standard 5 gallon / 20 liter diesel jugs to his fuel dock and loaded it with exactly 20 liters — as read by his fuel dock counter. It filled to an 1 ½" short of the 20-liter mark cast into our fuel jug."

The Handford’s claim they’re not the only ones to have been shorted, but they stuck to their guns and were ultimately charged for only the amount of fuel they received. But the adjustment in the charge was not made, they report, with a smiling face.

Our questions for those of you who have taken on fuel in Turtle Bay are these: If you carefully checked how much fuel you took on, did you get the correct amount? And if you didn’t, what, if anything, did you do about it?

For bonus points, if you’ve taken fuel on in Mexico, you’re probably aware that some fuel docks charge — and quite a bit, at that — for dockage while taking on fuel. Indeed, in some places it’s less expensive to hire some locals to buy fuel at Pemex, and deliver and decant it on your boat than it is to fuel up at the fuel dock. Our question is whether or not this ‘dock fee’ ticks you off even more than being shorted slightly in some out-of-the-way place such as Turtle Bay?

If there is one happy aspect of this whole thing, it’s that diesel in Mexico — which is subsidized — continues to sell for about half of what it does in the United States.