New Water tanks

Picked up my new water tanks from Gareth at;

Dura Weld
3599 23rd Ave S, #9
Lake Worth, FL 33461
561-586-0180 Office
561-586-0181 Fax
www.dura-weld.com

Excellent work as usual.

I have four tanks in the original space (below the saloon deck - two either side).  I may add a third one each side as I have the space.  All tanks are sized to to be easily removable for cleaning / hull access etc.  The hull tanks have a capacity of  18  to 20 gals each (approx 78 gals tot).  I have one extra tank which fits on the port side or the Engine Room where the fuel tank fits on many W42s' (this fuel tank was an optional extra).  That water tank holds approx 45gals.  We cruised our last boat with 70 gals but naturally our usage will increase in direct proportion to water availability.  With sensible use 120gals will easily supply two people for 14 days Bahamas cruising.

Planned obsolescence????

Just changed out a water heater for a friend. Looks like it is about 12 years old and appeared to suffer a catastrophic failure of the weld. I am not really complaining about the product. I'm just posting it here for general info.

Fresh water from deck....test

While waiting for the torrential downpour to stop so that I could finish installing the last NFM port I took the opportunity to test the water output form the deck drain diverter valve. One drain filled a 5gal bucket in 40 seconds. Admittedly it was a typical Miami summer downpour but that's a whopping 100 gals in less that 7 minutes if I have both deck drains switched to water catching.

Water Tanks revisited....

The Whitby 42's water tanks consisted of a hull liner under the deck in the saloon, with a riveted and gooped in place aluminum lid placed on top. There were two tanks, port and starboard. Naturally these tanks, after 30 years have some issues. They leak around the rivets and in some places in the hull liner. TIH tanks had also developed some interesting aluminum corrosion blooms.




For some reason I thought today, when it was 95 degrees below decks (with the Mickie Mouse air conditioner running full blast) would be a good day to tackle the starboard tank.



First use the existing inspection hatches to remove as much of the top lid as possible. A Sawzall works well for this. With a little effort you can remove all of the center of the lid from the forward edge to the after one. The next problem was removing both riveted edges.



Having seen what Bob Cambell did to the center fuel tank with a few come-a-longs I decided to revert to using mechanical advantage. A few cranks of the 1 Ton hoist and the sides popped right out.




This is the cleaned out liner. The two raised pieces are the chocks for the baffles which can be ground off as necessary. The approx dimensions 46" long X 20" wide X 12" deep which should give me approx 50 gallon capacity per tank (two tanks). This will leave me a 22" long space forward of the tanks for pumps etc. I may use two smaller tanks per side for ease of installation.

I may also add another 30gall tank behind the settee on the port side for more water storage and as ballast as the boat has a slight starboard list.

Water system (temporary) installed