Carpe Diem Fuel Tanks

Saturday 5/21

There are two jobs for this weekend, removing all the vent lines to the Port Aft tank and getting all the fuel out of the tank. There are two vent lines per tank. They are both 1” lines to vent the 2” fill. My guess is there are two incase one gets blocked like with bugs and it was easier to run 1” lines than 2” lines in the space provided. The lines have been there for 23 years so they are pretty stiff to move. It takes removing the back of the cabinets in the salon to get at the top of the vent lines to move the, enough to detach them from the tanks. Here are the four port side vent lines, the engine room blower host, the 2” fuel fill and the black water tank vent lines. I clipped most everything loose to get some play in the lines and then removed them from the tank which is below the floor. This picture is inside the cabinet in the salon. The tanks are just below this picture.

The next job was to remove all the remaining fuel in the tank. I cannot have fuel dripping out when the tanks are moved. I have drained and pumped out all the fuel I can get to so the only thing left is to open up the tank and bail out the remaining fuel. These tanks have a large access port in the side of the tank for cleaning. Although, I don’t know how that was ever going to work as it me days of work to uncover the access port. So this certainly is not a yearly maintenance project.

Once the tank was opened by removing about a dozen nuts the cover could be unstuck from the sealer preventing leaks. This sealer and cover worked well as there never were any leaks here. This is the inside of the tank looking toward the rear at one of the baffles that keep the fuel from sloshing around at sea. There is a little red fuel at the bottom of the tank and that is what needs to be bailed out. The sides of the tank look pretty much brand new as they should being flooded with oily fuel most of the time. So the sides of the tank certainly would not have leaked from the inside.

Here is another picture of the inside looking at the front of the tank. You can some gunk in the tank which felt like grit. This is probably dirt or rust bits. But I am pretty impressed with how clean it actually looks. I could have seen a ½” of sludge in the bottom if water had gotten into the tank. There is so little stuff in here that the filters would have no trouble filtering this as the fuel moves through the filters.

Sunday 5/22

I spent some more time this morning bailing fuel. I used one of the big 18” x 18” fuel absorbent sheets to bail fuel. I would soak up the fuel inside the tank and then squeeze the sheet out into a fuel can. This actually worked quit well as the sheet could be used over and over like a sponge.

Later in the day a friend came over to take measurements of the tank. I am going to need accurate measurements to order some new tanks. The tanks are 60” long, 27” high and tapered from 14” at the bottom to 18” at the top and hold 100 gallons. From that we estimate they weight about 200 lbs. We also wanted to be sure we could move them to the center of the boat over the stringers. Once in the center, they have to be moved forward between the engines and out the engine hatch. There is some tilting and sliding that needs to be done to de-tank them from the boat and the measurements show we can do it with about 1” to spare.

Once we get them out of the boat the final measurements will be done and the placement of all the opening for fuel lines carefully measured. I want identical tanks to go back in so none of the fuel lines need to be changed out. I could increase the fuel capacity by probably 100 gallons if I wanted by making the tanks longer or wider but it is not worth playing with as all kinds of things would have to be changed.