Fuel tank renovation

When we were working with cleaning the bilge one day we accidentally hit one of the connections to the fuel tanks and broke it. It started pouring diesel into the bilge and we did a temporary fix. But this was something that we definitely needed  to do a proper fix for.

Since we had broken one of the connections in the fuel tanks we had decided to remove all the other connections so that we could change them. When we were removing the remaining connections we managed to break 3/5 of them. It was a really good decision to change them! And it was also a good thing it broke now when we had the engine removed. It would have been an absolute disaster if something like this would have happened in the middle of an ocean, for example.

We emptied the tanks and decided to open them up so that we could see that everything looked good inside the tanks. This was also a good decision since they were very dirty…

While working with the fuel tanks we also cleaned the final part of the bilge.

Then we continued with the bottom connections on the tank. These connections makes it possible for us to empty the tanks from below. This is a good thing since diesel weighs less than water, and we can get rid of water and other bad things in the tank.

When we knew that there were no leakages we continued with sealing the hatches on the fuel tanks. We used a flange sealant since the surface on the tanks isn’t flat it will seal better. Since we have just done a thorough cleaning of the tanks we will probably not have to open them any time soon.

We also removed the water heater, to add some extra isolation to it. Our water heater is a water heater combined with a beer keg for extra volume.

We have some final cleaning to do in the bilge before we can lift then engine and generator back into the boat. But there’s no rush, it is still ice on the water here in Stockholm and it needs to melt so that we can move the boat to be able to lift the engine back inside.