Gulf Harbor Marina Newsletter

To our valued customers,

Ethanol is here!  Within the next couple of weeks, our fuel dock will be selling ethanol blended fuel (E10).  Since ethanol blended gasoline will dissolve more water than non blended gasoline, we would like to inform you of necessary precautions you will need to take with your boats.  Unfortunately, we have no choice in this matter, this is federally mandated and ALL retail gasoline selling points will have E-10 by mid-summer.

Boat owners should be very diligent with the service intervals they observe and most importantly, fuel water separating filters should be changed more frequently.  Most boats are rigged with the fuel filters, these filters should help keep water rich ethanol from the motor fuel systems.

Another concern for boaters will be phase separation of the ethanol and gasoline.  The water which is in your boat fuel tank can draw the ethanol from the gasoline creating a bottom layer that contains ethanol-rich water and a top layer of octane-deficient gasoline.  Fuel treatments and stabilizers from your boat motor manufacturers should help delay the phase separation.  Gulf Harbor Marina sells the conditioners from all manufactures in it ships store.

Other concerns with the E-10 fuel are deterioration of poor quality fuel supply hoses, rubber components on the marine engines and fiberglass fuel tanks.  It is difficult to address all these issues in this notice.  Boat owners concerns regarding these problems can be discussed with our service department.

The Gulf Harbor Marina service staff is here to help all boat owners cope with the fuel supply changes which will soon affect us.

Please feel free to contact the service department with any and all questions.

Respectfully,

Steven Cocchi

Service Manager

Gulf Harbor Marina

941-488-7734