Am I missing something?

I don't typically link directly to the websites of others for my posts, but like "Credit Card Captains", this is too good, or perhaps rueful, not to share.

Swan lurk: The boat that couldn't sink could be yours.

This is basically a recapitulation of this. Please read them and evaluate. You may feel pangs of sympathy. Or contempt. Or a frothy mixture of same. Or, like me, you wish you had a buddy with a helicopter, a winch and a harness. That's a cool half-mil of salvage.

Now, I wasn't there, I can't judge...or rather shouldn't, but does it strike the average reader of these delirious missives that the skipper and crew perhaps gave up a little too easily?

The part about the iPad being at 15% power...I nearly spilled my beverage. And yes, I know I'm sounding like Crusty Old Skipper Who Hates Everything, but it has become common for me in recent years to nail jaywalkers while riding my bike on city streets. They emerge from between parked cars with their eyes locked on their texting...I feel I'm doing the species a service with an elbow check or three. I get a similar feeling reading this story. Sailors like this will eventually make seatbelts and airbags mandatory on boats, if that makes sense. I won't even get into the idiot tax of compulsory insurance.

Could they not have...oh, I dunno, sailed due west until they hit Virginia or North Carolina? Was the siren's call too compelling?

Don't sail from home without them. All of them! There be dragons! And sarcasm!

I don't know. I wasn't there. But it reminds me of an increasing trend in cruising, that of calling for rescue from a floating boat capable of sailing, and particularly of this boat.

A new workboat for my boat club

I don't often discuss my boat club activities, partly because I feel it's of at best small interest to many readers who would prefer I discuss the curing time of various rust conversion paints and the proper lubrication regime of 40-year-old winches...as I do...but the truth of the matter is that almost all of the work done on Alchemy is done at my club in Toronto and it has been by their indulgence with my dilatory methods of boat refitting to which I owe a great deal.

So...today, the long-awaited New Work Boat was splashed.

Hooking up: This 22 footer, which resembles a flamboyant landing craft fit for the invasion of Munchkinland, is pretty light and that hull is sealed...it's basically a giant metal air bubble. So even a light wind can get 'er moving. The old boat was steel, increasingly thin steel, true, but ran about 2.5 tons in weight. This boat is lighter by far.

The fellow in the boat is Don Weston, our club's Vice-Commodore of Marine Operations. This project of vale to the old rustbucket and bienvenue to the new was headed by him. He's got every right to be pleased with the outcome.

Yeah, clearly we skew Boomer. What of it?

The action shots involved a bottle of champagne that proved reluctant....at first.

And this guy works out!

Mazeltov!

Where's that whisky now?

Nice, ain't it?

A tentative tickle of the throttle tests "touchy".

Gratifyingly swift at igniting, the 90 HP outboard (complete with prop shield to reduce prop walk and protect against the large, blade-bending objects this vessel will occasionally retrieve) ran swimmingly.

The usual gang of workplace hazards.

It wasn't long before a number of the Mooring Committee's previous workboat drivers were "certified" (i.e. unlikely to drive it into a wall or another boat) on the new vessel, and mooring servicing began immediately as the club launch approaches.

As for the new name, it's the old name. I'm kicking around a few logos:

I think I like "Safety Orange" the best, even though the club colours are red, black and white.

Anyway, that's the part of the club for whom I volunteer. Gets me out of the paint pots.

Powerful silence

Pool noodles. Is there anything they can't do?

Bringing along a Honda 2000 is the road less travelled for the modern cruising couple. Most cruising boats that bother with power generation beyond that provided by alternators, wind and sun opt for smallish diesel gensets, installed beneath decks, and usually with discrete cooling and exhaust systems. While there is very likely enough room for that in Alchemy's capacious "engine room", which I can state after spending many an hour down there is more like a steel plated crawlspace, I did not like the idea of a second or third "thing that drinks diesel", if we include a Wallas or Espar heater (to name two popular brands) into the mix. One of our cruising goals is to live in a state of electric frugality from what amps could be wrested from the wind and the sunshine.

Eh, not so much. I rather be Gushing.

That said, having a Honda 2000, or even two of them (the Companion model, which is not a Doctor Who reference), is a way to have 10 or so AC amps for virtually every power tool I would bring, sparing the 2000 watt inverter from a "lossy" conversion from hard-earned DC back to AC.  I picture the inverter being on only occasionally, like when we are underway and making alternator amps, in much the same way as I picture we will make water and do other heavy draw activities. If I'm running a Dremel for a hour, however, or charging the anchor windlass battery, or need to drill a few holes ashore, the Honda or a similarly sized "luggable" genset makes perfect sense.

Not only an example of perfect sense, but a reason to sail to Oswego.

Using it aboard, however, requires stowage and perhaps a measure of protection from the elements, and its somewhat volatile gasoline fuel. Running portable gensets like the Honda 2000s on deck, particularly a steel deck, is a recipe for resonance below, and annoyed anchorage-mates above and across, even given the Honda's relatively quiet operation and near-invisible exhaust. I mean, the Hondas are quiet, but only in comparison to a similarly sized go-kart or lawnmower. They aren't silent...but they can be made nearly so.

So a couple of ideas have been percolating: Bring Hondas, but make 'em quieter and more weatherproof. I got the idea from this thread on Cruisers' Forum, and while the considerations of not poisoning oneself, or burning down the pilothouse or something else tragic and avoidable. Putting such dreams to one side, let's further consider the advantages or rather the rationale for putting two boat bucks into Honda's silly little putt-putt plugs.

My amperage has been thusly embiggened!

The happy new boat owner thinks: Why, I shall obtain for my fine vessel a passel of batteries of the finest make, thereby allowing me to charge via Nature's infinite bounty, and therefore I will have the electron-flavoured juice to watch My Little Pony videos in the inner sanctum of my cruiser's teaky saloon.

Alchemy's crew quarters are admittedly Spartan.

So one has a thousand amp-hours of batteries, for all one's powered needs. How much of that is actually usable? Keep in mind two factors: What I tend to call the "usable band" of battery power is about 30%: from 50% state of charge (SOG) to 80%. You need to have some extra bits to throw charge into a battery bank after 80% or so, and I would think it's worth it, if one has, as the Brony boatie in question, only solar as a charge source aside from the standard alternator on the diesel.

The second factor is battery draw-down. It's not always easy on boats to devise a realistic energy budget that accounts for all the amps being consumed. If you have a fixed draw, like a fridge, an investment in LED lights, foot pumps for water, extra insulation for the fridge and maybe a nice big alternator if you need to pump out 12 NM out and want to take the battery bank to 95%-100% or so, this has to be part of the plan going in. In the end run, I believe we will save on NOT having a genset or burning more diesel in one, and we will have a quieter life in a quieter boat.

Not a robot turkey, merely prudent battery maintenance

Part of this game plan is being honest: We accept that 750Ah of expensive deep-cycle marine battery capacity means about 225 Ah of actually usable power, and that wewill be cycling often enough to want to clap on an equalization charge (which may be possible with the solar, maybe not) and we will want hydrocaps and temperature sensors and SG readings and other care and feeding aspects in order to get a good five or six years out of your (hypothetical)  T-105s.


So the question is not just "how much solar" or "how big the alternators" or even "how many Hondas/Panda/Onans" but "how much use and how much capacity and how much monitoring determine how much solar/wind?"


Such is the way forward on a cruising boat: Work your way backward, doing math.

UPDATE, 14.04.07: If one is interested (and one may be, because of the handiness of using synched up Hondas as baseline hydro for one's house), here's the technical explanation for why You Can't Do That in Canada:

http://forums.motorhomemagazine.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/27253477.cfm

Short form is that CSA doesn't allow the type of paralleling circuit in "our" Honda standalones that the States does, or tends to do, as the standards vary state-to-state.

The "fix" is to buy two Companions, as far as I can tell. Canadian or American won't (then) make a difference.

The problem is that then you lose the 12 VDC circuit!

So we're back to one American Companion and one American "straight" Honda 2000...if you think you'd want 12 VDC, and you might on a boat, mightn't you?!

Swinging the lead as little as possible

We are choosing to call that dark debris "silt". It's not silt.

A "winter storm in spring" is currently battering Toronto, increasing angst and frustration with our rehab pace and, because there is actually ice on the sidewalks, roads and Alchemy's decks, increasing the danger of even going up the ladder.

It is also 10 degrees too cold to paint. Argh.

So readers get an update today that combines a limited amount of actual progress with some anticipated directions that progress will lead.

That's "lead" as rhymes with "bleed", not "lead" as in "red".

The author demonstrates the hazards of working with power tools.

The first photo is the freshly removed section of Ghost Tank top plate, which ate about three 3/32 inch cut-off disks as spun by my venerable and compact 4-inch Makita grinder. That is,  until I switched to the beefier 4.5 inch Mastercraft "expendable" grinder and its 1/4 inch disks. The second photo shows what happens when a contra-rotational "skip" of the grinder shatters the disk and sends the pieces, Enter the Dragon-style, into flesh. The pants, they did nothing!

However, the plan to leave a five-centimeter "lip" around the tank means my clown shoes can still fit on the remainder of this tank, and I can access the debris and rust successful. When it warms up enough to paint, that is.

After much dithering and cross-eyed readings of MSDS sheets, I chose Metal Prep Rustlok 6980, a product that combines the "rust conversion" I desire to lock up the existing poo-tank corrosion and the primer function necessary for whatever topcoat I choose.

Requires a roller, a brush and 10 degrees Celsius

I've used Metal Prep before, primarily to remediate dings on the hull, which are subsequently coated in two-part barrier coat (Interlux, for those keeping notes), and the Endura two-part topcoat that most closely matches the hull colour (number 92, "cream"). Metal Prep covered by Endura and then skinned with very thin HDPE strips and butyl tape sealant is how I intend to both seal and electrically isolate the aluminum roof from the inward-turning mild steel flange of the pilothouse enclosure.

More china than steel plate. A sign you've failed to stick to the maintenance sked.

Back to the ghost tank: We can now scrap the surface of the plate and the more egregious flakes away from the surface and can lower a fan and/or a heat gun to dry out that fairly grim layer of "deposits" at the bottom. I even have a pretty powerful vacuum aboard for that last bit, but it remains to be seen how dried out that layers needs to be to allow full access. And the point of all this? As related previously, THE RUST MUST BE STOPPED on any steel vessel, for fairly obvious reasons relating to sudden onset of non-buoyancy, not to mention beverage spilling and day-spoilage. So the bare minimum for the Ghost Tank is a physical removal of the loose stuff, and a "push brush" technique of slapping on the Metal Prep. Metal Prep likes to be not quite dry when the second or greater coats are applied and that goes for the barrier coat. Whether we will get that period of sufficient warmth prior to launch is still a Known Unknown.

As previously related, it would be nice to have this low and capacious hole filled with fuel, either as a integral tank, or as a box in which a plastic fuel tank squats. An alternative course would be to fill that space with ballast.

It is a somewhat odd fact that 2,000 year old Roman lead ingots are nearly identical to ones smelted last week.

I'm going to assume that most readers grasp the function and desirability of ballast in a sailboat. Alchemy's ballast is internal, unless one considers the solid "box keel" as a sort of elongated fin-thing. The "movable ballast" or "trim ballast" is currently represented by about a half-ton of lead ingots sitting either side of the forward collision bulkhead in the form of what I'm guessing are 50-kilo bars.

Not precisely as pictured, but a potential outcome for the Ghost Tank in one manner or another.

They are where they are because the full weight of tools, spares, lumber, anchors, not to mention the full length of anchor chain are not there. The ingots are to keep the boat on her lines. Throw in two ingots' of tool or spares mass, and logically two ingots can be removed from the forepeak, and either removed or repositioned beneath the center of effort. The salutary effect of ballast here would tend to "stiffen" the boat, make it more resistant to heeling or less "tender".


One could even go for a blend: Coat the tank throughly, lay down a "floor" of lead ingots and lay over that a smaller "daytank" made of HDPE. You would get the weight in the best place, and still have a nice extension of the fuel supply.

Picture this, only better secured and under a set of saloon companionway stairs.

Of course, batteries, being largely made of lead, are heavy, too. It's desirable, therefore, to have them low and, ideally, on the centerline to minimize the chance of spillage of the highly acidic electrolyte.

So it doesn't make sense, nor do we have the time, to make this call before we install the weighty battery bank. Committing to adding ballast aft of the mid-point of the hull, as is this tank space (although not by much) would be unwise. Better to move those lead ingots about (and the tools and forepeak gear in) once the batteries are in place in order to determine further ballasting and trim possibilities. So rust-proofing it is. I doubt I will even restore a new lid...it's just part of the hull, after all.

Regarding the batteries, I've mentioned seemingly crazy numbers of the things we wish to install in the past. It's not particularly crazy, especially if you wish to follow "best practices" in battery reserve power management. One of the best resources I've yet found is at John Harries' superlative Attainable Adventure Cruising website, which has a comprehensive series on the topic. The link is to how best maintain a whack of AGMs, but it's applicable to all boat battery banks and is a good lead-in, no pun intended, to the topic of battery selection, care and usage.

Not to scale, but there are going to be certain similarities to our house bank.

Now, we am buying and installing this summer what would seem to be a coastal cruiser or weekender an insane amount of batteries. We want the ability to run LED lights, our NovaKool reefer, an SSB radio and some occasional (10 seconds of coffee grinder, 90 seconds of microwave, say) inverter-supplied AC loads. I want to be able to do this, at anchor, during five cloudy, windless days during which I can't get much from the wind genny or the extensive solar panels I already have, and during which I do not wish to run the diesel for power or fire up either of the Hondas to charge the house bank.

Of course, I can always do this, or run out 12 NM under engine (and therefore spin high-output alternators for battery "topping up" purposes) and the likelihood of windless, clouded-over days in the tropics are a "worst-case" scenario, but it's a good example of how you wish to think. So, if I use 100 Ah/day, which is pretty low and requires solar showers, foot pumped water and forethought to install micro-draws like LEDs everywhere, in order to draw down 500 Ah over five days, I need a 1,000 Ah bank, which is about 4 x 8D batteries or the equivalent in smaller 6VDC ganged to form 12 VDC "sub-banks". After five days, they would be at 50% state of charge (SOC).

Not good.

Better to have that 1,000 Ah bank and draw down between 100% to 80% between charging opportunities, although it takes some doing to bring a large bank to full 100% SOC, the last few percent being the time-consuming part.

So even though I am proposing a "non-amp-greedy" boat, I am also disinclined to run the engine to make power (but I am entirely happy to make power when I need to motor somewhere) and I am also disinclined to dock for shore power unless it's free/reciprocal, and I don't want more fuel-drinking generator capacity than the Hondas I want to use in place of the inverter for when I want to use a nice, torquey AC-powered tool. Even the ones that can give me vivid injuries.

The battery dimensional have to relate to the carpentry and the need for ventilation, cabling, etc. This is quite preliminary.

That implies a big bank in which the "usable draw-down" is, in fact, a fairly narrow band of potential amp-hours. If you dock or don't mind a genset and have a "diesel fuel credit card", an investment in lead and acid isn't a pressing concern. But it's the admittedly preliminary amp-draw calculations I've made that have driven every other systems decision, down to second pickups in the water tanks to bypass the pressure water in favour of Whale foot pumps.

The big bank is therefore part of the ship-wide internal ballast considerations, just as much as the lead ingot and "diesel tank in the keel" considerations. Or, to take it out of the hull, are the decision where to put the reef points in the main sail.

Basically, ew.

And that's enough blather for a bad day for boat refitting.

Foul weather anti-fouling

Clearly, time for Cetol and a power wash. Not seen: Cat pawprints and leavings.

The Other Boat, clearly neglected over this Main Boat-focused push to finally relaunch, demanded her due yesterday. Last week, I removed the largely shredded canvas tarp. A product of Keeble Canvas of Belleville, Ontario, it had lasted about 12 years, which is, I am told, about two years beyond its expected lifespan.

Uncovered in the sporadic sunshine. The yearly hull polish is keeping this 40-year-old topsides bearable.

That lifespan might have been shortened somewhat by the exposed location of Valiente's winter yard, which is beside a dusty recycling depot with a constant and slightly ironic flow of diesel-powered, soot-spewing garbage trucks. The effect on the decks and canvas is obvious: "smoot" is everywhere, and it makes no sense in what is in essence a waterless, unpowered parking lot to attempt anything more than a token remediation. The inside isn't bad, thank goodness.

Does this bug you? It bugs me, even if a lot of my "green thinking" arises from the expression of the Scottish gene.

When it comes to tarping boats over the winter, many people opt for either "nothing", which in my view would undo all the core replacement I did at the beginning of my stewardship, or for the increasingly ubiquitous "white shrinkwrap tarp". The expense of this over a 10-year span exceeds, significantly, I think, that of the canvas tarp option, but it's the horrendous, dumpster-busting waste of it that puts me off, even if hauling the heavy canvas up ladders is rough on my ever-aging frame.
  

You'll have to imagine the howling wind. And the howling cats.

My boat partner, Clive, overcame his own shoulder issues to buff the hell out of the hull. On the inside, I installed and connected two new Group 27 batteries, installed a new, post-impeller pump "basket filter", which required the removal of the alternator just to reach the buried hose barbs on the block. We than did a gratifyingly successful test fire of the engine. The near-instantaneous ignition may have lasted a mere 15 seconds (the time it took to run the non-toxic coolant out the stern), but it's a joyous thing to know your winterization and maintenace regime was...so far...correct.

There's a limit to applying anti-fouling in the rain. This is about it.

Nice shine! Heavy overcast! Cat pee!

I have a bit more work to do in this area, but the boat's only a couple of hours from being able to be launched.

We can't get into the summer dock until April 15th or so, and so I'm back down to Alchemy to resume the drive to launch on April 27th. More on that soon.

The left-handed sheet bend, or how to enjoy port

A left-handed sheet bend: Avoid, as it is sinister.

Brain function, handedness and seamanlike prudence. What do these things have in common?

I've touched before on my amateur's interest in neurology, and how the physical way the various sections of our thinkmeat interact both in response to external and internal stimuli. Function follows form, but, as with the neurotypical right-handers, sometimes there are interesting reversals. Certainly, some individuals favour logic and others emotion; I think that sailors, a group of humans generally exhibiting both confidence in their skills and an almost mystical approach to the oft-superstitious traditions of the sea, tend largely to a balance of these states of mind.

While there's a fine line between seamanlike vigilance and rampant paranoia (or so my enemies tell me), this reflects my experience as a sailor and as a person trying to incorporate sailing's life lessons shoreside.

Despite tacking through a youth that included being hit by cars, door-prized on bicycles and participating in a few martial arts, I did not break a bone until I was 36, when I slipped on the surface of the sloping alley outside my flat and snapped three of them in my leg and ankle. Picture trying to punt a field goal with your own foot and ending up with a joint in the shape of a "Z" and you'll get the image. The irony is that I was walking back to my own home from a tea party, of all things. Black ice, an Earl Grey-fuelled need to pump the bilge, and a pair of smooth-soled Florsheims in December were my undoing.  Back in my roaring days, I was very careful on foot or (regretfully, now) bicycle tacking my way home half-cut on empty sidestreets and never once fell down. How could I? I was too nervous about falling down! So I could blame the leg break on excessive sobriety! The true cause was inattentiveness, the poorly cured cornerstone of sub-par situational awareness.

Bowline, left, and "left-handed" or "cowboy" bowline, right. Nice counterintuitiveness, there, Wikipedia.

Obviously, the perception of hazard is both relative and situational. Our knowledge of the relative danger of boats at sea and the situations in which such danger might likely manifest needs to be tempered with the anticipation that it is during a random incidence of inattentiveness that is liable to bite one in the stern as much as can the dramatic "overboard" or "falling off the masttop" propositions.

I've also noticed that there's a subset of quite careful, safety-conscious boaters who seem to turn into clumsy disaster zones ashore...maybe it's related to a lack of "land legs" or simply a needed relaxation of the mindfulness required aboard, but these are the sort of guys who end up slicing themselves in the workshop or walking into walls...carelessnesses that they don't experience aboard. I have yet to see if handedness plays a role, but I know that tools made for the majority right-handers can be disorientating enough for left-handers to hurt themselves.

This is pretty old-timey. I prefer serrations. Fid's nice, though.

One example is the humble sailor's knife: I rarely darken the door of West Marine, as I have all the anchor-themed plastic tumblers I need, but occasionally they have a decent sale on useful gear. A couple of years back, WM had a sheepsfoot serrated blade folding knife with a lanyard for a mere $9, and I got about four of them to hang on the D-ring of everyone’s PFD.

This one. Nine bucks? I'll take a box.

While I also carry a better knife on a belt, and will go to a Spyderco or Boye non-corrosive knife for that spot before we hit salt water, having a sharp, disposably priced knife on the front of the PFD is to my mind a great idea. I tried the WM cheapo on a folded length of old seatbelt, which is roughly equivalent to tether webbing, and it cut through in a few strokes…same as with 1/2″ nylon braid. I think that if you are being dragged and the quick release is somehow compromised, the tether itself should be considered expendable if you are otherwise in danger of drowning. Whether one would have the presence of mind to effectively cut oneself out of a drowning trap is a different question.

There you go. Considerably more than nine bucks. Perhaps factorially so.

I also have had enough experiences where a knife was critical to safety. I was out sailing with my heavily pregnant wife when the wind jumped from 10 to 28 knots around a headland (yes, my fault, ultimately). I had to go forward to cut the leech line of an old No. 1 that had snagged on my spreader, all while my wife tried to keep the boat pinched hard to windward to slack the big-girl knickers of the sail. So, yes, I think an extra knife on the PFD makes a lot of sense. Your own nautical mileage may vary, of course. I also keep a couple of cheap serrated bread knives stuck with magnets either side (ah, that handedness thing again!) of the companionway (it’s a steel boat and it’s not near the compass!) for the same reason. Bread knives would make short work of even my biggest nylon rode if we had to cut and run in a hurry or I had to free someone’s purpling foot or finger from a strongly tensioned line…which I have seen happen on other boats.

The amusingly named "grief knot".

Not that I'm such a chief of surgery when it comes to sharp objects. I have some interesting scars that remind me that my blade and tool-handing techniques have been at times deficient. Whenever I think "oh, I'll just take a shortcut", there's a short cut to remind me of my lack of insight. I am nominally a right-hander, but I've always exhibited, as have some other members of my family, a certain amount of ambidexterity. I can do parlour tricks like mirror writing, shooting snooker with either arm, throwing darts with my left hand, and so on. It comes in, dare I say, handy at times, when having to operate rotational tools with either arm at full extension, or picking up tiny objects in poor light with the non-dominant hand. It's not a superpower, however: I play guitar and bass right-handedly, because that's the path of least resistance. It's more like driving a hybrid. You can opt for silent running for part of the trip. I've certainly tried to nurture my fairly weak abilities with my left hand, even as some neurologists consider "self-taught ambidexterity" to be a bad idea.

Being a left-handed sailor is perhaps both more integrated and more challenging still. Being a lefty of the pure variety (although reality tends to favour some measure of ambidexterity in lefties) means understanding the need for accommodation in a world clearly not made for your ease. It's more of a challenge when the gear could be dangerous for somewhat unclear reasons, like blade serrations on the wrong side. Nonetheless, keep your eyes peeled at the bar or on the boat: there may be more left-handed sailors than in the general population. I sense this is the case, but then it's something I tend to notice, along with untied laces and ear hair.

I've seen worse sail trim.

Lastly, this is the jelly know as the by-the-wind sailor: Handedness is possible even without hands, apparently.

The Ghost Tank haunting my bilges

Behold the mysterious ghost tank.

There was concern this was a refuge for brown trout.

In my steel pilothouse cutter refit, I can still find little surprises. Most, with the coming of wisdom, or at least a lower level of incompetence, are solvable, but some problems suggest a number of solutions. Those of the the ghost tank are several, but probably only one is the best.

Astoundingly, although I've clearly been badly delayed in the execution, this diagram is still largely what I want to do.

As I outlined a scant three-and-a-half years back (ain't refitting fun?),  I have an unused, approximately 40 U.S. gallon capacity keel tank directly under the engine. Formerly the original holding tank, I had no idea until last week (because unbolting the access plate requires that I fly the engine completely out of the engine bay) if it had been "put away cleanly", only that the people I bought the boat from (the second owners) had a new, HDPE tank next to the head.

I have been considering repurposing this tank as a post-Racor daytank, which would give me a sort of insurance against contamination from bad fuel going into the main tanks, and would extend our motoring range to 140 U.S gallons, or 40% more than now.

We found not the usual gasket, but a sort of rubber sheet seal. It came away cleanly.

Upon finally taking off the inspection plate, I found a few gallons of water...no smell, thank goodness, of either chemicals or of its former usage. I also found significant rust:

The pipe here is the "pump out". The plumbing needed to use this as a day tank would be smaller and forward for access.

At the time we were taking pictures, I didn't think to throw a magnet down to my wife, who was taking the shots, to determine if the tank was mild or stainless steel (SS). SS would be logical and would match the water tanks I've already pulled out in favour of smaller, easier to service and anchor down HDPE water tanks. SS would also (perhaps) suggest that the rust is superficial and could be power washed off, or treated with something like Ospho, over which could go a suitable primer and topcoat that won't foul or break away into polished diesel.. Frankly, I am not sure if that's the best course.

Going the "insert" route wouldn't mean I couldn't find a pretty close fit.

The other diesel keel tanks forward in the keel are black iron and are full of diesel, basically as a rust retardant until they are needed for use. That fuel, if even still usable, will need a dockside polish.

I suppose it's uniformly grotty.

I consider my options as follows:

1. If the tank is indeed SS, I would consider sand blasting the interior and applying a coating (if even needed). To judge by inspection of the lid and the tank top, it is pretty heavy gauge metal. There is no sign in the bilges or, thank Neptune, on the outside of the hull that there's any holes in the metal.
2. I would consider cutting off the top of the tank, cleaning and coating the interior with something like truck bed liner, and dropping in a HDPE diesel fuel tank with fittings forward (where there is access at the front of the new engine),
3. The same as 2, only with a 35-40 gallon fuel bladder. The advantage of this would be the ability to pump out the bladder of fuel and then pull it from under the engine for cleaning or service. It would be secured with bolted-down battens. A clear disadvantage could be the danger from having a working engine directly above this fuel.
4. Fill the rusty tank full of ballast to stiffen the boat and buy a load of yellow jerry cans to tie down on deck.

The last suggestion is only partly facetious. The original water tanks were on frames off the hull, and their (full) weight at the sides, plus the lack of weight in that space below the engine, made the boat almost tender, which is a ridiculous situation in a steel beast of this nature. The easiest solution would be to fill the void with shot and cement and let it harden in place. It wouldn't give me 40% more range, however.

 

Any constructive suggestions, horrible warnings or sage advice would be most welcome.

Rust never sleeps, but sometimes swims