Dec 18th

More plumbing on the aft end of the tank.

I accidentally found an interesting way to get more fuel out of the tank. The drain is not exactly at the bottom of the tank so there some fuel left after opening the drains. I had put a paper towel plug in the drain to keep any fuel from sloshing out if a wave came by from other boat. The fuel wicked right up the paper towel and started draining out. So with a cup under the paper towel, more fuel was drained. About a cup every 30 minutes.

Dec 11th

Next is dismantling the covers on the starboard aft tank and draining out all the fuel. Some of issues on this tank are all the fresh water, both hot and cold, lines. Everything has to go to the get the covers off. So, again, lots of pictures and labeling of parts.

This was ‘Lighted Boat Parade’ weekend. So here are some pictures as a diversion.

Hard to believe that there are motor boats under all these lights.

Here is one of the red trucks.

Here is just some of the plumbing that has to be removed. There is the sight gage, tank drain, cross over line, two lines to hot water heater and a lot of wires.

Parts of the tank are now visible with the big cover off.

Dec 4th

I am getting help this weekend to move the generator from the starboard side to the port side of the boat. It is in the way of removing the starboard tanks. So the first thing to do is finish up as much work on the port side as possible. That means move the remaining fuel from the starboard side to new port tanks. The front tank has about 70 gallons and the new rear tank is empty. So that is where the rest of the starboard fuel is going. I plumbed the transfer pump into the cross over lines and fed the fuel into the regular return line to the tank. That way the fuel never had to leave the engine room.

You can also see that bought new sight gage hoses as the old ones had gotten quite yellowed. I do not have the sight gage holders back in place yet but I am certainly not finished on the port side. The big push right now is to the get the starboard tanks out for fabrication as soon as possible.

The generator is enclosed in a sound shield in the aft starboard part of the engine. The first job is the complete removal of the sound shield. It is constructed of a plywood box with sound deadening materials on the inside.

All the ‘things’ connected to the generator must be disconnected. Here is the water lift muffler.

Here is the cooling water intake filter.

Electrical box with the remote connection to the controls in the pilothouse. This is the point in a project where I take tons of pictures so I can get this all back together. Reassembling the port side of the boat reused a lot of the pictures taken month earlier. You cannot take too many pictures in this project.

The sounds shield off with most of the wiring exposed.

More connections.

Nov 27th

The batteries have been occupying the port aft corner of the engine room. Basically I needed the weight on the port side to offset the missing tanks and that was about the only place they could go and still reach the power cables. The batteries are there to power the 12 volt in the boat and the bilge pumps. They need to move to the other side of the boat as I switch operations to the starboard side. Plus, once gone, I could finish painting the port side. Here is the area where the batteries were after the painting.

Here they are now on the starboard side all wired up again. I only have four of the normal twelve batteries in place right now. That is all the room I have available. I just love dragging 80 pound batteries around, but at least they are not 160 pounds.

This is a picture of some of the plumbing I had to remove and replace. There are two vent lines connected to the port aft tank, two running forward to the port forward tank, a 4 inch vent for the engine blower, a red hot and blue cold water lines and a new ground wire for the tank itself.

Nov 19th

Today I continued the framing. This is good picture of the rubber padding that went between the frames and the tank. Without this, the tank would be able to move around in the waves. This is tight enough that the frames had to be jacked into place to squeeze the rubber against the tank.

Nov 12th

Next comes framing. All the frames that were removed where well labeled so they could be put back into place. I had labeled them 1, 2, 3 and 4. The only issue was did #1 go in the back or the front. Some trial fitting figured that out. Need better labels next time. Taking the framing bolts out was a tough job because the bolt holes where the same size as the bolts requiring me to unbolt every bolt. So in returning the bolts, I drilled out the holes slightly larger so I can slide the bolts back into place. The wood will probably swell up again requiring the same procedure, but at least everything will go back together easier. Now, at least, I can get all the framing up in a day instead of the four hold per bolt it took to get them out.

This time I left all the blue tape in place until the last minute to keep any dust and dirt from getting into the tank. Once all this is back together, I plan on using my transfer pump to run all the fuel through the 2 micron filters a few times to clean anything that may have gotten into the fuel.

Nov 5th

Setting up for the second tank is getting easier now that the first one is complete. This time I glued rubber supports to the hull of the boat that will be at the back side of the second tank. This is to hold the tank in place side-to-side and to hold the tank off of the blocks of wood that cover the exhaust screws. These screws are potentially what caused the failure of the first tank by letting in water that rusted out the bottom of the first tank.

Graham came over to help wrestle the second tank into place. It always helps to have two people on the come-alongs when lowering the tank from the salon into the engine room. Then there is the matter of dragging the tank around to get it into place. A lot of cardboard helps make the job of dragging the tank a lot easier and helps protect the new paint. It takes a couple of hours to move the tank from the cockpit across the salon, down the hatches and then around the engine room into place. But at least there is room for this operation with about ½ inch clearance everywhere.