"What's that Smell" - More Major 'Tingums Busted

What is that Horrible Smell?

Julie says to me after the electronics guy left? We looked in the engine compartment and the bilge was completely filled with diesel fuel. Turning the bilge pump on appeared to have no effect (and was otherwise not a nice thing to be doing in a marina anyway).

The next morning, Julie and I are walking to find a bank (recall I had to give all of my cash away to "Karma" and a friend of mine, Captain Anthony Edgecombe, happens to drive by. He is not only a 500 ton captain, but a diesel mechanic and a hell of a nice Bahamian to boot.

We had actually attended church with him the previous Sunday in Treasure Cay to celebrate fathers day.

Anyways, he drove around to buy a smallish bilge pump, gathered some tanks, and helped me to pump out what we figure was at least 20 gallons of diesel fuel out ofthe bilge. We took the cans into town and paid a fellow with a service station $1.00/gallon to dump the fuel into some big 55 gallon tanks he has there.

Next day, Anthony came back and helped me to finish emptying the bilge and to diagnose the two pumps I have in place. One is "always on" and has a built-in float valve on it (to tell it when the water level is rising in the bilge). It appears to be seized up and is the reason the bilge was not automatically emptied.

Prognosis: Automatic Bilge Pump is Busted. This sort of pump, with the built-in float valve, can only be foun in the states, says Anthoony.

Next, we pulled the "Manual Bilge Pump", which is supposed to come on only when you throw a switch and diagnosed it. It turned out to be also dead and full of water inside of it's electroics compartment.

Prognosis: Manual Bilge Pump is busted. The good news is that this sort of thing can be bought in March Harbor, so Anthony runs me over to the store and I get a 1000 gallon/minute pump for I think about $259.00. He installs it and we are good to go for the moment with at least a manual bilge pump that will work just fine so long as we are on the boat to keep an eye on the bilge. It will not work for periods of time where we are away from the boat so the automatic-float-valve type will definitley need to be done ASAP.

Gas Tank Problems

So as to why the bilge filled with fuel, that remains to be answered. Perhaps the fill hose to the tank has a loose hose clamp or the vent cap is loose. Who knows? Unfortunately, to get to the fuel tank, you have to remove four big golf cart batteries first so that will have to wait for another day. I tell you one thing, when I have the boat retrofitted this winter, I am going to have a gas guage installed! (Can you believe there is no gas guage? That's just crazy man)