One of the biggest projects on this boat is the replacement of the holding tank, toilets, and sewage lines. The problem is that in 2001, Island Packet was still using aluminum holding tanks. The tanks have an epoxy liner on the inside, however once there’s a hairline crack in the liner, corrosion hits the aluminum pretty hard and the tank will eventually fail. Nineteen years is an exceptionally long life for an aluminum tank like this and we really didn’t want to risk rebuilding the entire boat only to cruise for a year and have a sewage leak. The tank has got to go! We also noticed while cleaning that a lot of the old hoses are starting to seep and smell. There’s a manual toilet in the aft head, which is finicky to use and I don’t like to trust the flushing of sewage to a small rubber flapper valve. The forward head has an oddball vacuflush setup, which is finicky and complicated. In short, the entire system needs to be replaced. At least we knew about it going in!
The problem, though, is that the holding tank is located along centerline, half underneath the master bed, and underneath a fiberglassed floor. They didn’t plan on anyone ever removing these! That means that no matter what you’re going to be tearing your boat apart. We had expected this to take weeks to get the tank out, however apparently the previous owners, at some point, had removed the tank from the boat! 😮 We pulled the wood floor panel up to discover the hole already cut in the fiberglass. It wasn’t even bolted down, so we just had to pry it up!
That saves us like a week of effort and breathing fiberglass dust! We also noticed that the previous owners had modified the top of the tank to add 2 fiberglass access panels. The top one is easy to see, but the second is underneath the bed. This doesn’t really matter to us except that this means that they had fully removed the tank from the boat at one point without cutting it in half or hacking apart the bed, which are the only other 2 options we had seen anyone do! There’s a chance it’ll be easier than we think!
First step though… empty the tank. You read that right.. the previous owners parked this boat almost 2 years ago and did NOT empty their holding tank. It’s almost full. Explains the unpleasant smell of the boat. ::barf::
We sucked all the shit out, filled it with water, and sucked that out (60 gallon capacity, FYI). I had already resigned myself to spending my day smelling someone else’s poo. We did discover that our tank vent line was completely full of dried crap from being overfilled, so we had to just cut the vent at the tank so it could be fully pumped out. (awesome…) Not unexpected, honestly, but really?!!?
The previous owners had screwed in a little bulkhead just outboard of the tank that was surprisingly easy to remove. They also used a mix of a bondo-like epoxy goo and spray foam to take up all the gaps between the tank and the bulkheads to keep it from moving around. I had to hack that out with a chisel. They also had boards hammered into random places and screwed in place, so we had to remove those to be able to get the tank out. The last board we needed to remove was held on with 2 screws all the way in the back of the void and then, in their infinite wisdom, fiberglassed a patch panel over the screw heads. (at this point, we curse their names). Eventually, through the power of love and teamwork, Jason and I managed to free the tank!
We thought about trying to remove the hoses from the fittings and unthreading everything properly, however given how corroded everything was, we didn’t think it would actually work. Pulling old hoses off of their fittings is hard on a normal day.. and these had been there for a long time and they were probably also glued on. We decided to get it over with as soon as possible and used power tools to just cut the plastic pipe fittings off of the diverter valves. It was as expected: disgusting. Huge shout out to our boat neighbors Sue and Russ for letting us borrow their water hose! 🙂 Eventually we had all of the fittings off of the tank, even if we had to use a PVC wire saw to just cut them off at the tank.
Miraculously… the tank just lifted up nice and easy out of the hole and we carried it outside. The task we had thought would take a few weeks was done in 2 day, most of which we spent whining about the smell and running to the store to get tools we didn’t have. Winning!
Overall, I’m astounded that it was this easy. I’m sure she’ll make up for it later, though! It’s a boat.. there’s always a catch! …and Jason drew the first blood sacrifice. I’m sure there will be many more. Now we get to order the new PLASTIC tank!