Remove Old Holding Tank

December 2002 --
First, I'd like to extoll the virtues of my new Eveready LED Head Lamp. This thing weighs about 2 ounces, and outputs both Red and White light, and can be focused exacty where I'm looking. It made this project a heck of a lot easier, and it's now one of my essential boat tools! All my old head lights were just too heavy and clunky, and pointed in the wrong direction whenever I moved my head and gravity took over.
This one is really nice!

Right.

So it's finally time to pull the holding tank. I've been planning this since I bought the boat, but it was second priority
to the standing and running rig.

This area will become my nav station. With all respect to C&C, they designed this boat without a decent nav station. I think this layout was for the charter trade, where it was more important to sleep 6 and have a 38 gallon holding tank...

38 Gallons is big. It was so big that the previous owner never emptied it --
but that's another story
that will remain untold..

It's time to rip it out so I can find out what's going on in there and start making plans. The first obstacle was the bulkhead between the quarterberth and the cockpit locker. The plywood in the quarterberth was laid down and the bulkhead was then constructed around it, so the plywood is buried deep under the bulkhead.

As soon as I bought the boat I spent 6 hours at the pumpout station rinsing everything, and then put 4 gallons of bleach, 2 gallons of Simple Green, 2 gallons of Lysol concentrate and anything else I could find that said
"disinfect and deodorize" on the label into the tank.
Fortunately, when I mixed it, it didn't explode.
I then topped the tank 3/4 full with water and let the whole chemical cocktail slosh around for months
while I worked on the rig and some other critical repairs, then spent another 6 hours at the pumpout station
rinsing the system out over and over...
This process pretty much destroyed the hoses and all the valves. That was deliberate --
I fully intended to replace everything, so my primary motivation was to eliminate bacteria and odor.
Then it sat for a year waiting for me to get to it.

I ripped the soundproofing off the engine side of the bulkhead to try to find fasteners.
(It turns out the screws were hidden behind the teak trim.)

I don't want to destroy the bulkhead -- yet -- because it seals the cockpit locker from the interior of the boat. Eventually I want it gone so I can expand the locker into the space behind it, but I want to keep it in place until I have a plan that keeps the boat structurally sound and watertight.

So I cut the plywood out in sections. It's a good thing I felt around underneath it before sawing, as there's fiberglass liner providing support on the outboard side. By prying the wood up I avoided damaging that -- it might have structural value.

Unlike the V Berth water tank,
which was bedded in polyurethane foam,
this tank was just wedged in tight and braced.
This certainly made the
De-construction nicer!

Eventually I figured out that the large hose fittings were screwed into the tank, and using two different vice grips they twisted off. The large Vice Grips are actually made for grabbing pipes, and have wide curved jaws.
This gave me a little more working room,
and finally the tank came out!

The sea cocks don't inspire a lot of confidence. Before I got the boat, it had been abandoned, and the zincs weren't changed for years. This pretty well damaged the through hulls and sea cocks.

I'll be replacing them next haul out.

Also, I don't like plastic fittings below the waterline, but I'm not going to try to take them off while the boat's in the water.

On the far left is the outflow, next to it is the inflow. At the top is the drain for the sink, and partially hidden on the right is the speedo! Now you can see why I don't try to clean the speedo before sailing. Somebody wasn't thinking clearly when he or she put it down there...

It was also a little silly to plumb this head with all the extra valves and hoses to be able to use it offshore and bypass the holding tank.
With the intake located just inches from the outflow... well....
So when I replumb it think I might just simplify and route everything through the holding tank. I really don't think that it will be a hassle to deal with, and the benefits of simple plumbing are enormous.

Whatever. New plumbing is going to be a while.
Now that everything's out of the boat I can see the space,
and can start making plans.
To the right is the aft end of the old quarterberth.
Note that there's a plywood shelf tabbed to the hull, forming a flat shelf. Some space is wasted under there, but that's just too bad as
I'm not going to mess with it.

At the forward end, you can see the plywood shelf again. Here, there's about 6 inches of wasted space under it.

Those wires are doomed.

I'm going to leave it like this for a while and think about it. Perhaps a small holding tank will go here, that will fit under the nav station seat. Or, perhaps I'll put batteries here and locate the new holding tank somewhere else.

The next step is to give the boat a real good scrubbing!

Designing a nav station is going to be fun, but
it's going to take some serious thinking.
The aft end of the quarterberth needs to be opened up to expand the cockpit locker, and a watertight bulkhead needs to separate the areas. I imagine I'll build a new AC panel back there, which will let me expand the existing DC panel and rework it.
That white shelf is coming out.

For now, I'm just going to stare at it and work on ideas.

Things started to get frustrating and ugly right about this point, as it was really wedged in there! Eventually I cut out more of the plywood, but at the forward end the fittings were wedged in such a way that it wouldn't move more than a few inches.
To the right you can see the "egress" fitting, which is fit tightly between a fiberglass liner section and
an underlying plywood support shelf.

Pulling that hose off made a nasty mess,
but all my earlier effort cleaning, disinfecting
and deodorizing the tank and hoses really paid off here.
This job was completely odorless. Still -- rubber gloves.