Tragedy Strikes

Guess what?

There's an issue with the boat.

Here's how my day went with the boat.

This morning, I saw the marina webcam showing my boat at the yard dock. I gave a call to confirm they were ready for me to move it to my slip. This picture shows the boat in the lower left.

In the middle of the picture, by the buildings, is the fuel dock. After work, I drove the hour to the marina to move the boat. I got a couple new dock lines from the truck and took them to the boat. I started the engine, uncovered the tiller, untied the dock lines, then motored over to the fuel dock. I loaded up the fuel tank with 10.38 gal of diesel. I know I put in 5 gal before and there was still some fuel in the tank so I'm guessing the tank isn't as large as I thought. So it's probably 20gal.

Anyway, after I filled the fuel tank, I motored over to the slip. I just missed it and had to back up and try again but it worked out. It takes some time getting used to the tiller. While I was at the slip, I sorted the dock lines and making sure the boat wasn't too far forward causing the bowsprit to get in the way of the walking space on the dock. I routed the shore power cable to the bow and connected to the power box for charging but didn't get to turn the power on in the boat.

Here I got dock lines sorted.

Looks good among the other boats at the dock.

Now, where the bad part comes in. While I was looking things over, browsed at the bilge. It looked orange. I was reminded of a picture I saw on a Cruisers Forum post. While I thought of it, I wiped down the front of the tank, where a piece of wood (or something else) was epoxied into place. I noticed some weeping through and further down I noticed some drips. I couldn't see anywhere else where there was a leak like from the water. Looks like I got a fuel leak. I made sure the bilge pump was turned off at this point to make sure I wasn't inadvertently spilling fuel

This picture shows where it looked to me that the fuel was leaking into the bilge. After wiping it up, I saw very slowly it would get wet again to start dripping.

To show just how much of a pain it would be to replace the tank, this shows how it is mounted. From the opening panel, under the engine, toward the back of the boat. It would require removal of the engine, and possibly the floor to get to it.

So with that, I got things ready again and pulled out of the slip and motored back to the boat yard dock. Gary, the guy I mentioned earlier, said they would help in some way. Right now, I'm thinking I might as well put it back on the trailer and get ready for a lot more work. I'm thinking the refit I was planning to start in a couple years may have just been moved up in scheduling. I was thinking to work over the planned refit over a few years. I've been working on a list of projects so it'll take some time to go through it all. Other than the fuel tank, there's refinishing the mast, new chainplates, new chartplotter, and much more to keep me busy.

I did at least enjoy motoring around the marina, although it would have been nice to do more than a few minutes here and there only to pull it back out of the water soon. I'll send an email in the morning to Gary and see what he says. I'm hoping they will at least be able to drain the fuel tank for me.

Last view before I left this time. Sad, I know, but some things like this is needed. At least doing a refit, it will allow the boat to last much longer. We'll see how it goes.