Diving deep

Until now, the water tank has been for washing dishes and brushing teeth/hand washing because you could fill a glass or bowl with water and wait. Eventually small black rubber particulate would settle out onto the bottom. The particulate was coming from an ancient fill hose made of reinforced layered rubber. With a Herculean amount of effort I got it off of the hose barbs on both ends and got it out. Unfortunately this resulted in an immediate panic since the hoses internal diameter was 1 3/4 inches- a very non standard size. Nobody had replacement hose. Not Lowe’s or West marine or anybody obvious online. 
The hose was too degraded to go back on so I was starting to consider trying to remove the old fittings from the tank and the deck when someone suggested McMaster carr. What a life saver. They actually had several options of food safe hoses in that size. Nothing reinforced and all clear but hey. 5.59 a foot? Sold. I wrapped it in duct tape and it went quite easily Ack through the bulkheads and onto the fittings, being pretty flexible and much thinner than the old hose. 

Next step was to open the service port on theyank itself. I built this up in my mind to mean that I was going to find all manner of gunk and or dead mice in and was quite dreading It. 

Phew nothing but antifreeze and a few little blobs. I cleaned up what a could and refilled through the new clean hose! Hopefully we can drink the tank water this year and stop using so many plastic bottles of water. 

Meanwhile matt has gotten all of the head hoses out and all of the excess through hulls are out. We found a rather bad patch job that necessitated cutting a hole in the hull big enough to stick your head through. The patch looks wonderful. 

Spring Labors

As we learned two years ago, two coats of barrier coat is not enough.  I've been sanding off the bottom paint since last fall.  I would say I'm nearly done all the parts that can comfortably be done sitting, standing, or kneeling, without the sander being actually over head.  The rest I'm going to try to use a chemical stripper on.  I put a small amount on a test area and it plopped onto the ground some time in the middle of the night so I guess my attempt was premature and I have to wait for the temperature to rise a bit.  

Seems like over the season we lost the anode off the prop nut. It also dug a hole into the rudder again so I think we might do away with this anode for now.  We haven't totally decided on a course of action. 

Also last season we had a terrifying day where we were motoring north into heavy winds and pretty decent chop crossing the mouth of the Potomac river, when we discovered that the anchor locker was basically open to the cabin. We took on a tremendous amount of water, but between manually bailing all day and running the bilge pump constantly we made it into port.  Turns out the anchor locker is basically shot.  The bulkhead was rotten and had a large hole in it, with only a film of wet wood and paint keeping the interior more or less separate.  Below the floor of the anchor locker, the lower bulkhead was just a piece of plywood tabbed into place and could be punctured with a fingertip.  It was where most of the water was going in. The drains were corroded away and a lot of water was going into the hull also.  A full renovation is required. 

Here's a sample of the cross piece that used to hold up the floor. It felt like a wet sponge and was easily crushed. 

This shot is looking down at the interior hull under what had been the bottom of the anchor locker, the lower bulkhead being the rotten looking stuff on the right. 

A different angle.





This is what the inside of the vee berth looks like looking forward, after we cut out the rancid old holding tank (time to go to a composting head). The paint is the only thing holding those bulkheads in place.  The current plan is to sister them from the anchor locker side, and then eventually add a layer of starboard or something for cosmetic effect on the interior side. 




That's the footprint of the old tank.  37 gallons.  Lots of new stowage space now!


The remains of the anchor locker floor. Yum.