Friday 29 April

I had a day off from work today so I got an extra day to work on the boat. The project for today is to remove the aft vertical support at the end of the tank. The bottom had already been unbolted from the rib. The problem today was to unbolt the top. The problem is the bolts are above the head liner of the engine room. To remove the headliner, I had to undo all the fuel lines that run alone the top of the engine room. Above the silver headliner are several inches of fiberglass insulation. Real messy stuff when it falls down everywhere. I took off all the easy headliner and of course, the bolts are not above them. They are above the headliner above the tank itself. This liner is not screwed in. Instead it is above ½ wood strips that are nailed in place. I pried off two of the supports with a screwdriver and then pulled the liner down enough to get at the nuts on the bolts. Once I had access, removing the bolts and then the beam were easy.

Here is the tank with the support removed. If these vertical beams are really floor supports, I may not be able to take them all out at the same time.

Saturday 30 April

Next comes removing the fuel fill pipe that comes through the floor into the top of the tank. Below is the top of the tank and the fill.

The top of the full fill is inside the wall where the galley counter normally is.

The fuel line is a 2” line that is attached to the full fill. That is 12” long and goes through the floor.

The full fill line had to be cut away from the fill pipe. Once that was done, I could turn the pipe. The surprise was that it was only screwed into the tank about ½ a turn. That certainly was not very safe. I would have expected 5 turns minimum.

Sunday 1 May

I have pretty much decided that I can get these tanks out of the boat. I have been able to move the forward tank with a crowbar. That at least tells me they are not glued, bolted or strapped down. So to get the forward tank out and not move the engine, I will need to remove the rear tank, slide the forward tank to where the rear one is and then remove the forward tank. So now the work is to remove the rear tank. That will take removing the batteries so the rear tank can be moved to the center boat and then out the hatch between the engines. This is the before shot of the batteries and the rear tank. There are three sets of batteries. Night, day and engine batteries. Four batteries in each set.

I moved 8 of the batteries into the storage under the cockpit. This will actually be a great place for them as it is farther outboard than their normal place so their 8x70=560 lbs will help balance the missing fuel. I left four batteries connected to power the bilge pump, etc. I will do something with them next week to move them and still keep them connected.