I have a spare too but I used to carry a half dozen spares if I was going away anywhere. I still get a little dusting but nothing that concerns me. More accurate alignment played a large part as well.

What I meant was when we set longer destinations from home, we inevitably increase our miles covered under power. We burned 80 gallons of fuel on a 2 week trip to the Cape and back. That's quite a bit more than we have used in the past on the same trip. Just bad luck with winds this time.

I'm not surprised having gone up and down the east coast a couple times in our boats. It's just a fact of life. I don't mind though, I like to stretch our boats legs a little now and then and that means burning some fuel.