DIY fuel polisher defeats dirty diesel

Diesel engines have simple tastes, says Graham Keating, but clean fuel is one that can't be guaranteed in all corners of the world

- Graham Keating

Give our diesel engines clean fuel to drink, plenty of fresh air to breathe, plus a regular jump-start of amps, and they’ll happily run pretty well forever, given a little routine maintenance of course. However, guaranteeing that crucial supply of clean fuel is becoming something of a headache for many sailors and it’s certainly challenged us aboard Maunie for the past few years.

In 2012 my wife, Dianne, and I set off on a voyage that we’d long been dreaming of and was now, suddenly, a reality. With our careers firmly paused, our house rented out, the car sold and our furniture in secure storage, we’d moved aboard our 1997 Vancouver 38 Pilot, Maunie of Ardwall, for an adventure that would take us from our home port of Dartmouth down to the Canaries, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and finally across the vast Pacific. Our ‘we’ll only be away for about two or three years’ reassurance to our friends and family as we departed turned out to be very optimistic; five years later we finally fulfilled the fantasy of sailing our own boat under the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Our unplanned tardiness was nearly all the fault of the Pacific Islands; having reached New Zealand in October 2013, we felt their magnetic pull, so we spent three winter seasons exploring the island nations of Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu, returning to spend each summer cyclone season in New Zealand, before finally shaking ourselves free to return to ‘first world’ life after over 30,000 miles of sailing.