Red Ranger
Norfolk, VA

The v-berth tank always leaked. The port side saloon tank now leaks.

See https://www.whitbybrewersailboats.com/maintenance-repairs-upgrades-and-additions/42-water-systems-and-tanks/230-water-tank-fun-on-jdv-2. 

The solution seems to involve custom tanks by Dura-Weld.  See https://plasticfabricatedtanks.com. 

Under the saloon floor we have two choices:

Option 1: Follow the Joie de Vivre plan and tear out the old tanks in their entirety. This gains about 4½″ vertically (by 35″ by 72″) which doesn’t seem like much until you consider the tank is only 12″ tall; this is 37.5% gain in volume.

Option 2: Sacrifice some volume and install four new tanks inside the legacy tanks. This involves less destruction and less reconstruction. It sacrifices volume, but lets us drop four tanks through the available hole in the cabin sole, strap them in, connect up tubes and have water.

Under the v-berth, we have similar choices. The tricky part about the v-berth is the tanks are not fiberglass with an aluminum lid. They’re 100% aluminum over some supporting structure. The aluminum could be sitting in a fiberglass shell, or could be sitting on wooden stringers.

I think I want to assemble 5 mini-tanks inside the available volume. Four are wedges, jammed into the fore and aft corners. The remaining one sits over the center ∨ at the aft (deep) end.

The access panel under the v-berth is 21″×21″. The space is 50″ long and expands from 12″ by the anchor locker to 54″ by the forward head.

I think a handful of tanks that are less than 21″×21″ can be dropped into the space and plumbed together with a common filler, common vents and common drains. This will create a system of tanks less than the original volume, but made of of nice, clean, new materials.

I think I can strap each tank to a plywood base and screw the base to the aluminum, minimizing the destruction.

What’s the original volume? 

Yes, that’s calculus. 42¾ gallons. (The formula assumes the 54″×17″ triangle shape is consistent from front to back. I can’t measure the front triangle, but it appears congruent with a 12″ base.)

Five tanks of 4, 4, 6, 6, and 18 gallons gets to 38 gallons of water. It’s better than what we have now, which is an estimated 42¾ gallons of air.

Next Steps? 

Cut the old aluminum lid off the old tank. I think this involves the following:

1. Drill holes into the aluminum tank lid under the v-berth access hole. Use the reciprocating saw (the Dewalt version of a Sawzall) to cut away the tank lid. This will be larger than the original (tiny) access panel on top of the tank, and make some room to work.
2. Slice all the rivets around the outside of the lid. I don’t know if I can reach all of them. This may involve some advanced yoga to get the saw all the way in there. The Dewalt has four blade position alternatives, and this may key to slicing off the rivets. 
3. Cut the lid into pieces and pull them out through the hole. This involves carefully checking clearance to be sure I don’t accidentally saw through something important, like the v-berth itself.
4. See what access we have under the floor to the aft section of the tank. I theorize that there’s an awkward space that — perhaps — can be cut away to allow putting in really handy drains from the aft ends of the three tanks that fill the aft end of the void. A drain that’s at the lowest point (with no pickup) would be handy for priming the water pump.

Once we have access, we can start to make more concrete plans.

1. Measure. Measure. Measure. The size of the forward cabin door and the size of the companionway hatch may constrain the tank sizes. (Scott and Jeanie got a 21″×16″ tank into the saloon, which suggests this may not be a constraint.)
2. Redo all my concept sketches with correct measurements.
3. Get some CAD software and draw the plans for all five tanks. Maybe https://www.shapr3d.com/3d-for/engineering will do what I need.
4. Make cardboard mockups and dry-run the installation to see if this will work.
5. Update the CAD drawings.
6. Order tanks.
7. Order plumbing parts CA wants to replace the filler and vent lines, too. Why not?

Then we can see if I can assemble it all.

I want to do the v-berth first because there’s nothing at stake there. It’s a complete win if this works out.

While the saloon is simpler geometrically, I think it involves a more complex path of destruction to get the old tank lids out.

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We have a bilge pump counter. Over the last few weeks we’ve been severely worried about the counter being non-zero.

Non-zero bilge pump counter is a sure sign of a leak.

When we return to the boat and the counter is more than one, it's a sign of a fairly serious problem. The counter is a score for seriousness on a scale of 1 to anything over 3. A worrisome problem. Leaks are notoriously hard to find in the complicated plastic structure of a boat.

The main hatches drip. The hawsepipe (where the anchor chain goes below deck) drips. This doesn’t explain the bilge pump.

We had the hatches rebedded to reduce the dripping. We’ve larded some goo around the base of the hawsepipe escutcheon. 

The rain on Wednesday 11/11 was epic. 24 hours of non-stop rain. Non. Stop. The newly rebedded hatches leaked. We found the leak by complaining to the folks who rebedded them. They sent a guy over. He noted the gaskets were old. 

At first he told us to replace them. After he left, CA checked the work order for the hatch work. They was supposed to redo the gaskets when they rebedded the hatches. About the time CA was ready to lecture them on the work-order, the company owner called (apparently, they also checked the work order) and the gaskets will be redone as soon as it dries out some more. 

Here’s what we saw.

Above my finger is a big wad of goo that holds the lens in. We never took a knife and cut away the overflow. The goo is sitting on a mottled gray aluminum frame. 

There’s a line of black behind my finger. That’s the gasket.

There’s a thin line of white. Daylight.

Then there's the light gray lower part of the aluminum frame. A line of new, white bedding compound and finally, the interior teak frame. The black at the bottom is the rest of the boat, cast into shadow by the flash.

About that thin line of daylight. I put the gasket in about 10 years ago. It’s now hard as a rock and no longer fills the space. We (seriously) did not think to check this when it started dripping. (Perhaps we didn’t need to rebed the hatches, and we only needed gaskets. Lesson learned on diagnosis.)

But these are drips. Not enough water to trigger the bilge pump. They’re minor annoyances. When the float switch is high enough to start the pump, it’s gallons of water down there.

Some History

We cleaned the port side water tank earlier this summer. Then we filled it. 

Then we switched to the starboard tank. We’ve been using that water for the last month or so. CA washed the entire deck this weekend using water from the starboard tank. (Winter is coming, might as well drain the tank doing something useful.)

So. 

After deck washing, as expected, the starboard tank finally ran dry. 

When it did, we switched to port. Which is clean. And waiting for us.

But.

Here’s the kicker

The port tank is empty.  EMPTY.

Ah.

That explains the bilge pump counter.

The port tank was sort-of-fine until we washed it. Now it’s not fine. It leaked the entire 100 gallons into the bilge.

There are a few choices open to us. All messy.

1. Try to find and plug the leak. The tank is at least 72″ long, 29″ wide, and 11″ tall. Most of the edges are inaccessible. The forward 36" of the tank is all that’s visible. Access to the interior is worse: the inspection ports are too small to do much. 
2. Replace the port tank with a new state-of-the-art plastic tank.

Also. The V-berth tank has always leaked. We’ve never used it. It’s probably time to tackle it, also. We want a “bow-shaped” tank. I’ll need to take some measurements up there, too.

Scott and Jeanie on Joie de Vivre replaced both under-the-floor tanks with a combination of new tanks giving them more water than the original setup.

I’m thinking of something less clever. The port tank is close to 120 gallons. If I’m willing to give up 20-30% of it, I think I can (relatively easily) drop four custom-made 28-ish gallon tanks into the space under the floor.

(The space under the old tanks needs to be cleaned and painted; then supports and straps are required. It isn’t trivial. The original tanks were assembled with the hull, making them a right pain to replace.) 

The cabin sole opening is 34″ × 23″. The space inside the tank is closer to 35″ wide and 72″ long. This is 4 tanks, each about 34″ × 17.5″. Individually, they fit through the opening. Collectively, they mostly fill the space. It leaves a 4” gap between the forward pair and the aft pair.  (It’s all about 11″ deep if you want to check the cubic inch to gallon measurements.)

I think I can (easily) build a four-way filler manifold that lays across the tops of all four tanks. A four-way vent manifold, similarly, will be needed. The four-way pickup manifold at the bottoms of all four tanks would be a wonderful thing. 

I think some of the manufacturers will add an inspection port. What’s important is figuring out where the opening under the settee will be and trying to get two aft-most tank inspection ports somewhere near this spot. The two forward tanks are easy, since they’re entirely visible.

Scott reports that there’s space outboard of the original tanks that’s accessible. I think he used used 9″ tall tanks to make best use of the space. But they have to be slid in carefully and supported over the curve of the bilge. Utterly inaccessible under the settee. Not simple to install.

Next steps?

Maybe put some water in the tank to observe the leak? Not sure this really helps. It’s essentially impossible to plug unless we’re super lucky.

Still one more test might be good. Maybe we had the valves set wrong and pumped all the water out of BOTH port and starboard tanks. There’s a tiny chance that (a) the starboard tank doesn’t leak, and (b) the bilge pump running was pure coincidence. (If so, there’s an epic leak somewhere else. A leak that didn’t trigger the bilge pump during the 24 hours of rain on the 11th. This seems unlikely.)

After Thanksgiving, I need to get the DeWalt reciprocating saw (to go with my other DeWalt tools) and start cutting. It’s messy and loud, but — it appears — it’s got to be done. Then I can measure carefully and determine what tanks (and fittings) to buy. Then I can try to build and epoxy in some support framing. (This can be tricky to bond to the interior of the hull when it’s cold.)

That will make for a fun winter project.

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CA bought a magnetic knife holder to put with her refinished cutting board. 

Getting the backing plate away from the magnet is not fun. You have to commit to pulling them apart without wavering in the least. If you hesitate, that piece of steel will take chunks out of your finger-tips.

She started measuring and stopped to laugh for a while.

“I almost asked for the level,” she said. “Why would I use the carpenter’s level in here? We still have a ¾ tank of fuel. Nothing is level.”

A couple of pencil dots and some drilling after that and she’s got a place for the knives.

She made me put the big magnet bar onto the backing plate. It does jump out of your hands, that’s for sure. 

Next up?

The Beckson port lights have rubber gaskets. We think the original gaskets might have dated from the 80’s. They leaked.

We tried to replace them and did a terrible job. We didn’t really read the instructions carefully enough.

This time, CA read the instructions to me several times to make sure I totally understood what was going to happen.

See https://www.beckson.com/installgasket.html for the details.

She called out two important points about this process.

First, Step 3, "Find a polycarbonate (rigid plastic) or hardwood headed mallet.” We did not do this before. It turns out, this is critical. Forcing it in with your fingers doesn’t work well. Eventually, you get them in, but, they’re not quite right and you have to crush them flat to get them not to leak.

Also, Step 8 has two parts, and they are out of order.

Step 8(a) should be “CLEAN AND DRY THE SCREEN OR BACKUP RING…” Do this after you finish the top two corners but before you try the bottom two corners.

Step 8(b) should be "So, continue around the window body…” Do this after you put the screen in.

We used a heat gun to warm them up before putting them in. That seems to work out well, also.

We think we may have done the first two correctly. Ten more to go.

Something in the entertainment system has stopped working. It appears that I no longer have power to the Fusion stereo. Circuit breaker appears OK; power is available at the panel. I have a little connection strip that’s almost — but not quite — inaccessible under the stereo. I need to pull that out and see if something’s come loose or corroded and leading to a faulty connection. 

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