The same thing happened to us at the fuel pump at Club de Yates in Acapulco. The captain wanted to "top off" the tanks. We were headed south with the next fuel stop to be in Costa Rica. He figured he needed about 150 gallons, we got about 220. Like you, I'm not ready to accuse malpractice at these pumps. It could have been the Captain's error. But he was also basing his estimate on fuel gauge measurement and logged usage. All I'm saying is pay attention at these pumps. If a pump operator wants to cheat you, he doesn't have to do it with a bad flowmeter. One way is to simply not reset the pump when you pull in. (There was a small boat ahead of us filling 10 gallon fuel containers.) If you don't watch it being reset, bingo! Also language difficulties, metric specifications and currency differences. It's just too much trouble to try to figure out, what the operator is saying, what pesos per liter translates into, ... . If you don't want to be cheated, supervise every step of the operation. -- Jim

Possibly one of those metric to gallons /inches  slide rule

                                  Ken 
                                  MV Mrs. Hudson

Jim & Rita Ague wrote: > > > Also language difficulties, metric specifications and currency differences. > It's just too much trouble to try to figure out, what the operator is > saying, what pesos per liter translates into, ... . If you don't want to be > cheated, supervise every step of the operation. Possibly one of those metric to gallons /inches slide rule converters will need to be in all of our cruising kits -- or maybe a simple calcualtor with the necessary conversion factors at hand - when ever we fuel at locations using these measures -- this was brought home when fueling in Europe very rapidly. Diesel in the Netherlands was about $ 4.95 per gal, yet in Belgium about $ 1.65 per gal - in dollars. I simply could not keep track of the liters to gallons and dollars to pounds to guilders /francs conversions. Though I never felt slighted in any way by the fuel barge operators - who for the most part were most helpful . Though there was one fellow who would not take anything but Belgium Guilders - in cash . This made life rather difficult for a number of boats simce it was the last stop before returning to the UK and everyone had planned to be short of guilders. Ken MV Mrs. Hudson