Who is buying
On this page11
The owner
One boat, a locker with limited space, and a season. Buys small, keeps it aboard, and the container lives in motion for months.
Which argues for the small end
A quantity that gets used within a season rather than a gallon that sits for three years going off in a locker. 253 of the 354 containers here are a pint or less.
The yard
Many boats, a workshop, and a shore-based store. Buys at the gallon end, decants into working containers, and has a floor to spill on.
Which is where the 13 containers over a gallon matter
And where the F style bottle earns its place: 12 PE F style bottles, square in plan, which pack into a shelf without the wasted space a round bottle leaves.
The chandlery
Buys a branded consumer product and sells it off a shelf. Label area, shelf presence and a format that stands up are the requirements, and the discharge risk belongs to the buyer rather than the seller.
Three different label problems
An owner wants to know what it is and how to use it. A yard wants the specification. A retail shelf wants a brand. The same product needs a different panel for each.
And one shared requirement
Nothing breakable. A chandlery floor, a yard floor and a cockpit are all places a glass bottle should not be, which is why the absence of glass on this shelf is a feature.
The decant is the yard's exposure
Moving oil from a gallon into a working bottle is a transfer, and a transfer on a dock is a spill waiting for a wake. The shop consumables property covers the labeling side of a transfer.
Seasonality is real here
Spring commissioning and autumn layup are the two weeks the whole category sells in. A container that has sat through a winter in a shed is the one being opened.
Which makes the closure a storage question too
Freeze, thaw and six months of nobody looking. A closure that seals at the dock in June has to still be sealed in April.