Water Tanks and Anchors

Scotty finished work on repairing the first water tank and then he phoned me to come and have a look. When I arrived he repeated his pressure-testing of the tank by taking it to 1.4 atmospheres. As the pressure built up I saw the water column on the plastic tube rise. He then stopped pumping and said that the column should stay at that level the entire night. Instead it started to drop. He then painted along the weld of one of the seams with soapy water and the air was seeping out along the entire seam. These were not welds that Scotty had done but were the originals.

He says that the tanks are very well made, but that seam and possibly others were not welded correctly. It appears to him that they butt-joined the sides and then melted the metal from one edge to the other rather than putting in material from the rod. This may explain why I kept finding fresh water in the bilge. I assumed that it was rain water coming in from around the stanchons or toe rails. And maybe we haven't been using fresh water at the rate that I thought we were. Anyway, he can fix the tanks but he wanted to show me the problem.

On another front, I opened up the storage areas under the V-berths and was pleasantly surprised to see that they were much drier that I had expected - drier than last year although we've had probably twice the amount of rain. I'm hoping that the major repair job I did in the anchor well area had a lot to do with the improvement.

One purpose of the V-berth activity was to move the spare 35-lb fisherman's anchor (The one that came from Chiquita, my first boat), 7 meters of chain, and 80 meters of 12mm white rope to storage below the port quarter berth where Arnold will sleep. The idea is to shift as much weight aft as possible.

At the bow I now have the cruising anchors in place. On the port roller is the 45-lb Manson plow anchor with 38 meters of 10mm chain (recently re-galvanised). In the upper chamber of the locker is the dismantled Swarbrick 35-lb fisherman's anchor with 15 meters of 10mm chain (new) and 80 meters of 18mm white rope (new). That will be payed off the starboard roller if required. The idea is that if I am forced to anchor in a deep anchorage, say 25 meters, I'll be able to get my 3-to-1 ratio of 75 meters of anchor rode. I'll also use it if I have no idea of what the bottom is like. With a plow anchor you must avoid weed as well as hard bottoms of rock or tightly-packed sand because the plow will just skate along the bottom. With a fisherman's anchor you don't need to care what kind of a bottom is waiting! If Harley comes through with the 50-lb anchor I'll probably keep it dismantled under a quarter-berth and use it in place of the 35-pounder with the 15 meters of chain and 80 meters of rope if I'm expecting heavy weather. And thanks to a tip from Scotty I am now using shackles tested to 1.5 tons.