Each time I go to the IOM, I'm saddened by the number of hotels and pubs, some of which I've stayed at or drunk in, that are now flats or old people's homes. This isn't going to help at all.
When I rode in the Manx in '93, my Newcomer's race was sponsored by the IOM Steam Packet Co. Guess how much discount I got on the ferry - yes, zero %! That said half our party were hiding under dustsheets in the Transit. After we'd set off from Heysham, a crew member banged on the side of the van and told us it was safe to come out now!
If that ferry ever sank they would have had no idea how many were actually on board. I seem to remember that the rip off fuel sold from a pump in the paddock was also courtesy of the Steam Packet Co, but higher octane than anything you could buy from a petrol station on the island, and still cheaper than pistons - so much of the lap is flat out that you used the best fuel (and plugs) you could get hold of.
When I went (as a crew member) with the Honda Superbike team, we took out own Elf race fuel, in big drums. There was controversy over this fuel, which most Superbike teams used. The regs said it had to be fuel 'readily available from a pump'. It was, but that pump was in the paddock at Silverstone! Even back then in the late 90's I think we worked out it was £64 per gallon - as we weren't paying for it ourselves we used to put it in the generators and paddock scooters (all Honda of course), just because it was convenient.
A Honda dealer we'd met on the Island showed me how to derestrict the scooters by plunging a hot soldering iron into an electrical module in just the right place - I ended up racing Ian Duffus down Bray Hill (ignoring the 30mph limit somewhat) on a pair of them, he thought it hilarious that he could smell the race fuel in my exhaust! I think the scooters eventually got sold to the security guys at Cadwell Park at the end of the season.