Saturday, August 1, 2009

The 1000lb gorilla is no more......

The tank is out!!!!!!!

Anyone following this blog will know that the keel fuel tank in the Whitby is a source of concern. This is an aluminum tank that was foamed in place. All but a handful of boats have tanks that leaked and are no longer in use. After several initial attempts to cut out the tank I gave up and left it for another day.

Then along came Bob Campbell. Bob used to own a Whitby and has worked on the tanks on a number of them. He was therefore given the job of removing the original tank. It put up a valiant fight but the tank came out in two parts. The complete operation took one very long day.





The following photos show some of the numerous holes in this 30 yo tank.






3 comments:

capndeb said...

ok, you've got my attention... how???

The Incredible Hull said...

I was not actually there. When a wiry Scot and his assistant are machete-ing you boat its better to leave them to it. They cut the pan out of the engine room (TIH is currently without an engine). Then cut the tank about 30ins from the forward end and used come-a-longs to pull the tank parts out of the keel. He did say that it was the hardest one he had done and broke two come-a-longs in the process.

Susan said...

UGH!