Fuel is usually a grudge purchase, even though it’s one that most of us depend on.
While even understanding how the price of fuel is put together, doesn’t give boaters a good idea on how to budget for their monthly fuel necessarily. To do that, you need to understand four key things:
Which fuel your outboard uses
Did you know that fuel affects the performance of your outboard? The right fuel lubricates your engine, be sure you know if you’re filling up with 93 octane or 95 octane fuel.
The price per litre
Every fuel is sold at a particular price per litre. A lot of factors go into the price of fuel, as you can see from the image below.
Understanding the price of fuel in South Africa is a bit confusing: the price is made up of a base fuel price, a fuel levy, a RAF levy, service cost recoveries, wholesale margin, dealers margin, storage, and handling costs, and the final distribution costs... and still some geographic-specific levies (i.e. the inland demand levy). However, there is not much that boaters can do to influence the price of fuel, other than purchase fuel-efficient outboards.
Your car’s fuel efficiency
How fuel efficient is your outboard?
This is usually worked out to how many litres of fuel you use per 100km.
How much boating you do in a month
Don’t be too nit-picky here… take an average. The best would be to record how much you go boating over a month or two and use those figures.
Once you can answer these four questions then it's a matter of using some basic maths to work out what your monthly fuel budget should be. Divide your monthly average boating distance by 100, then multiply this by how many litres you used per 100km, and finally multiply this by the price per litre of your outboards specific fuel consumption. The number that you’re left with is the likely budget you will need to keep boating each month.
