Where is that smell coming from?

You know what’s fun? Smelling diesel on your boat and not being able to figure out where it coming from.

Did we spill a little when filling the tanks last? Did we forget to throw away the cloth we used to clean up after filling? Or is there a leak somewhere?

If you guessed #3 you would (unfortunately) be correct.

After a couple days of smelling diesel, and not being able to find the smell (we looked in all the regular places) we finally found it. In retrospect I’m not sure why we didn’t find it sooner, because it was in one of the places you would expect – the bilge under the diesel tanks.

It would seem our port diesel tank has sprung a leak somewhere. Looking for the leak is basically pointless, as we can only access about 10% of the tank walls, but we still did try to find it with a creative set up of headlamps and mirrors. It didn’t work.

Finding the leak wouldn’t have really helped us solve the situation anyway, but humans are curious creatures and we really wanted to know WHY there was diesel leaking into our bilge.

The reason (we think) is that the port tank, which is a vintage 1983 model, had finally rusted itself a hole. We were told this happened with our starboard tank in the past, which is why the starboard one is a newer fiberglass model. In the back of our minds we knew we might have to deal with this someday, but part of boat ownership is hoping that someday isn’t today.

When then went through the cycle of our typical doomsday thought pattern that associates most issues we find with the boat. We start at the reasonable thought that abandoning ship is the best option, transition to ‘we must find a yard to haul out and fix this now no matter the cost’, then we flip flop to the equally reasonable ‘if we just ignore it, it will go away, right?’, slide back up to ‘maybe we can ignore it until we get to xyz place, then we can worry about fixing it’ and finally settle on ‘we can fix this ourselves, lets get to it,’ typically accompanied by a big sigh and a healthy round of Googling what other people have done in this situation.

When we finally arrived at the realization that we had to deal with this now, we then had to figure out A) how to open and empty the tank and B) where to put 40 gallons of diesel. (Of course the tank was full, we had JUST filled it.)

With the help of our buddy boat(Mug Up), we were able to acquire 4 empty jerry cans (2 of ours, after emptying them into our other solid tank, and 2 from Mug Up, after they emptied their into their tanks). Mug Up also had an awesome diesel transfer pump they lent us, and after removing the 12 bolts and 3 hose connections from the top, we took our first look ever at the inside our diesel tank. The borrowed pump made quick work of filling the 4 jerry cans with 20 gallons of the diesel.

A trip back over to Mug Up took care of 17 of those gallons, and then a stop at the other (previously unmet) boat in the anchorage(Noos 2) took the last 3 from that round. Our new Canadian friends on Noos 2 were able to take an additional 5 gallons from the next round of pumping, which after filling our jerry cans again left us with just 2 gallons in the tank, which we later emptied into a brand new jerry can purchased at West Marine later that day.

Crisis averted, no abandon ship necessary!

However, now (with our 2 new 5 gallon jerry cans) we only can carry 60 gallons of diesel, instead of the 90 that we could previously carry (two 40 gallon tanks and two 5 gallon jerry cans). This greatly reduces our range under motor, but it will have to do for now. Removing and replacing the diesel tank is a job that can not be done underway, and we aren’t sure when we will get the chance to do it. Someday – but not today.