We arrived last night to find two good bits of news, things that are being done for us 🙂
First, work has started on replacing the toe rail which was agreed as part of the original purchase. So far the joint between the deck and hull has had old filler that was loose. Turns out some of it wasn’t original and some of that had never fully cured (too cold when made or not enough hardener). So we now have most of that joint filler replaced with a modern slow cure epoxy (suitable for Beaumaris temperatures). Later the new rail (which is like a black rubber escalator handrail).
Second, our new boom has arrived. Will look at that in detail when we get the masts back up, maybe next month, maybe not.
Anyway today we started on the diesel tanks. First job was to empty them. So we siphoned out the diesel and offered it around the yard. People turned up with containers which was handy as we must have drained out over 100 litres in total.
Here are some pictures of the dismantling of the starboard casing around the tank between siphoning sessions.
The tank was very firmly held in so there were a lot of bits to unbolt and cut.
That shelf on the left was a beast to remove. Turned out there were some beefy bits welded into the tank that went into grooves in the wood. Completely invisible so I couldn’t work out why the beam wouldn’t come out even after cutting it on all sides.
Once the tank was free it essentially just fell into the corridor where it got wedged. It was obvious that it still had diesel in (without an inspection hatch it was impossible to look in and see). Also that it wasn’t going to fit through any of the possible ways out of the boat. So we would need to cut it up first.
There turned out to be another 20 litres of very dirty diesel which we pumped out into buckets and filtered into fuel cans.
This is what the new space looked like before cleaning. Huge!
Last bit of the tank going out of the boat.
Job done.
Tomorrow, we will hopefully get the 2nd tank done. At least we know we we are doing but lots more work to clear access to the tank and it will need to be cut into smaller pieces.
Sustainable Sailing 