On The Bourbon Trail

Did you know...  95% of the world's bourbon comes from Kentucky.

In fact, I thought that bourbon *had* to come from Kentucky... not so.  This is just one of the things we learned on the bourbon trail.  (No, there is no actual trail, but we did visit a dozen distilleries in the Lexington-Louisville area).

Here are the actual 5 (Federal!) rules defining bourbon:

• Must be made in the USA (not just Kentucky)
• Must have a grain bill of at least 51% corn
• Must be distilled at no more than 160 proof*, aged at no more than 125 proof, and bottled at no less than 80 proof
• Nothing can be added except water (no artificial colors, flavorings, etc)
• Must be aged at least two years in new, charred white oak barrels

We learned that this is the process:

• Grind the grain and cook it at boiling for a few hours to soften and release the starch
• Cool to below 145°F and add the ground malted barley.  This supplies a pair of enzymes which break up the starch molecules into sugars (starch is a sugar polymer).  At this point, the mash will taste quite sweet.
• Cool to near room temperature and add yeast, and then add a few hundred gallons of the previous fermented batch - this is the reason it is called "sour mash".
• Allow the yeast to grow and consume the sugars...  the byproducts of this are alcohol and CO₂.  In fact, if you get down and peer across the lip of a 40,000 gallon fermenting tank, you can *see* the CO₂ spilling over the edge (CO₂ is heavier than air). 
  
  
  
  
  At the end of the fermentation the mash is 8-10% alcohol, and has a sour taste (see "sour mash", above)
• Pump the fermented mash in a continuous stream to the top of a 50-65' tall copper stripping tower and blow a continuous stream of steam up the tower from the bottom.
  
  
  
  
  This counter-current flow strips the alcohol out of the mash quite effectively.  The vapor coming out of the top of the column is passed thru a condenser.  The condenser output is made visible at a "tail box", where you can see a continuous stream of 125 proof alcohol pouring out of a 2-3" pipe - it is truly impressive.  This product is called "low wine".
  
  
  
• The low wine is then subjected to a second, batch - not continuous, distillation in beautifully formed copper vessels whose shape recalls medieval alembics.
  
  
  
  
  The product from this distillation will be about 160 proof and is called "high wine", "new make" or "white dog".  I've tasted this, and aside from the nose burning alcohol content, the taste is quite strong and depends hugely on the grain bill (proportion of corn, rye, and malted barley in the mash)
• The high wine is then diluted to 125 proof and put into new, charred white oak barrels (pretty much all made at a company named Independent Stave, in Louisville)
• The barrels are stored in a rickhouse, for years.
  
  
  
  
  This is a building which could house 20,000-50,000 barrels.  The smell in there is heavenly!  Because this is where the angels get their share.  You see, the bourbon seeps into the wood of the barrels and evaporates from the outside - this evaporative loss is called the "angels share", and can be quite substantial.
   
  
  
  During this time, the white dog gets transformed into bourbon by leaching the carmelized sugars and other flavors that were formed during the charring of the inside of the barrels.
• Finally, the Master Distiller (a job I would love to have!) goes into the rickhouse(s) and tastes barrel after barrel, coming up with a collection (a batch) which, when blended together, will give the characteristic taste of the brand.  
• There are also small batches of the really good stuff ("small batch", "small batch select"), and even individual barrels ("single barrel", which of course will be more variable from bottle to bottle, since the barrels differ significantly, dependent on their locations in the rickhouses) selected by the Master Distiller.  These two designations are the best of the best, and are priced accordingly.

During the tour we were afforded the opportunity to taste upwards of 40 different bourbons.  No way did this qualify us to be Master Distillers, but it did give us the chance to make comparisons between the low-, mid-, and high-range products.  My take?  The best (read: most expensive) bourbons have the most complex tastes, of vanilla, caramel, butterscotch, smoky wood and spices...  a combination that is impossible to really describe, but which recalls the smell of the inside of rickhouse.

Conclusion:  Buy the expensive stuff, but don't drink it.  Instead, sniff it and sip it very slowly.  My favorite was this one:

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*  BTW, the term "proof" is old.  In colonial times, when one of the major imports to the nascent nation was Caribbean rum, a test was needed to prove that the alcohol content of the barrels being unloaded from ships was as advertised.  There were no laboratories - the test had to be simple and doable right there on the pier.  Well, it turns out that when 50% alcohol is used to moisten gunpowder, the gunpowder will just burn.  Less than 50%, no.  So 50% alcohol came to be called 100 proof.

On The Bourbon Trail

Rust Stains

Over and over again I see people querying for a method to remove rust stains from fiberglass.  And over and over again I have typed in a quick answer.  Because my quick answers are not always complete, and also because I am getting frustrated at answering the same question over and over, I am writing this post so that I can just refer to it.

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Rust.

Fiberglass.

The surface of fiberglass (gelcoat, actually) is porous at the molecular level, that is why it stains so easily (spill a glass of wine and you'll see what I mean...).  And so it is with rust stains - they are not *on* the surface, but *in* the surface.

So what is the best way to remove rust stains from gelcoat?  Certainly one method is to simply remove the rust contaminated gelcoat - that is what abrasives do.  Besides the elbow grease required, this approach is limiting because eventually you will run out of gelcoat.

And then there is chemical treatment.  Boy have I seen a wide range of suggestions here:

• Distilled white vinegar
• Cider vinegar
• Coca Cola
• Pepsi Cola
• Ospho
• Whink
• Bar Keeper's Friend
• Starbrite
• Scotchbrite
• FSR
• Clay Bar
• Rubbing compound
• Bleach (numerous variants here...)
• ...

Some of these are abrasives, and as mentioned above, they work by removing the stained gelcoat.

Some of the non-abrasives will be marginally effective.

But for a sure-fire, elbow-grease free and effective solution, use oxalic acid.

Oh no!  Acid sounds scary!  Must run away!  Oxalic acid is a weak acid, in the same vein as vinegar but a little stronger.  Do you wear rubber gloves when handling vinegar?  I didn't think so.

Oxalic acid is a crystalline solid - looks a lot like sugar.  To be effective, it must be used in solution.  Now here is an interesting fact:  oxalic acid is way, way more soluble in hot water than cold...  so when making a solution, always use hot water.  And always make a saturated solution (that is, no more will dissolve in the water - you can tell because there are still a few undissolved crystals on the bottom).

So just make up a saturated solution of oxalic acid, wet a piece of paper towel with the solution and stick it on the stain.  That is all.

Also some notes:

• Bar Keeper's Friend is a soft abrasive with a small amount of added oxalic acid.
• The active ingredient in FSR is oxalic acid.
• Whink contains HF - hydrofluoric acid.  HF is scary stuff - it will even dissolve glass.
• Bleach will be completely ineffective.  In fact it may serve to set the stain.
• Phosphoric acid (Ospho, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola) will be marginally effective

 So how would your average boat owner be able to obtain this magic oxalic acid?  Actually it is quite easy.  Oxalic acid is sold at Home Depot, etc. as "wood bleach"... look for it in the paint section.  Now why would this be?  Because the dark brown color in wood is due to iron oxide - rust.  And by the way, the dark brown staining from tannin-loaded waters is also due to iron oxide - oxalic acid will work on it too.

Now a final note on toxicity.  You have already eaten oxalic acid.  The sour taste in rhubarb is oxalic acid.  But you don't eat the leaves of rhubarb - why?  Because the oxalic acid concentration in the leaves is higher.  As with almost everything, the dose is the poison (even water and oxygen...  drink too much water and it will kill you...  deep sea divers use exotic gas mixtures containing far less than the 21% oxygen in the air because the pressure makes oxygen that much more dangerous).  So don't eat or drink the acid solution.  Don't breathe any dust.  Don't rub it into a cut or use it as an eyewash.  Wash your hands after contact.  It is about 3 times more toxic as a poison than aspirin, and about 1/4 the toxicity of caffeine.  Yes, it is poisonous but no heroic precautions are necessary.

Rust Stains 

A Tale Of Two Tread Plates

A year later

Some of you out there may recall an experiment I started a year ago - using benzalconium chloride (BAC) as a teak treatment.  Well, here are the two tread plates after a year of exposure and neglect.

Clearly, the BAC made a huge difference - the untreated plate on the left still has algae and lichen growing in the low spots and pores in the wood.  The treated tread plate on the right is free of these pests, except at the very top, where I probably didn't get a full dose of BAC applied.

Score!

This was so successful that I just completed spraying our teak rub rails with BAC - these are being fully colonized by the same characters, especially where the rain water from the deck scuppers drains on them - in those places, the lichen has completely covered the wood.  In fact, the coverage is so complete there that I will probably have to reapply BAC, since most of what I applied probably never made it thru to the wood.

Where you can easily obtain BAC?  See my first post on this handy material.

A Tale Of Two Tread Plates

Yup, It Works!

Recently I was working with some West System epoxy (this was on a car project, not a boat project, but no matter).

Nobody who has worked with epoxy has ever, ever come out of the project with clean hands.  Come on, admit it.  Your hands were sticky when you were done.

In the past I've used a variety of solvents to clean off the mess.  Most worked, but most were also harsh. 

I had read in the past that vinegar (a 5% solution of acetic acid in water) was effective as an epoxy hand-cleaner.  But I never believed it.  Come on, a water-based solvent effective on an organic sticky mess?  Ha!

Well, the joke's on me. 

Universal goodness

I tried it, and it worked!  And by "worked", I mean that it literally washed away the black sticky, partially cured mess on my fingers and hands.  As effectively as if it had been maple syrup...  no!  More effectively!

(Of course, once the epoxy is fully cured, it is cross-linked.  That is, the entire bulk of the epoxy is essentially a single molecule of unimaginable molecular weight.  No solvent can dissolve it, tho some may infiltrate and swell it, weakening it.)

Yup, It Works!

Another Use For BAC

As a prelude to varnishing Eolian's caprail, I always remove the teak tread plates that I made so many years ago.  And this time I looked at them, really looked at them, for perhaps the first time in years.  The bacteria, algae, and worse, lichen had made themselves a very good home in and on the teak.

Now normally I would have just gotten out the sandpaper, but then it dawned on me to try benzalconium chloride.  I've extolled the virtues of this stuff before, and continue to be impressed with it.  So I sprayed some on the right hand tread in the picture above and let it dry in the sun for a day.  Then I gave it a very light (emphasize light) sanding with 220 to remove the corpses.  What a difference!  And because the BAC is now soaked into the wood, I expect it to fend off colonization attempts in the future.  This has now become an annual task.

Next:  I'm going to spray our unfinished teak rub rail with BAC.  It is equally groady looking.

Another Use For BAC

Chemistry Experiment: Results

When I did this experiment, I promised you the results. Here they are:

Before

After

The benzalkonium chlorides definitely killed the lichen.  But it did take a mild scrubbing with a brush to remove the corpses.  Please note that previous scrubbing with the same brush and bleach had no effect on the spots.  I apologize that I used a washer for the sizing comparison - I didn't have a dime in my pocket.  The washer is a little bigger than a dime and a little smaller than a nickle.

I also applied the 5% benzalkonium chloride solution to a portion of our dodger canvas.  Please note that this canvas is more than 10 years old, and has lost most of its water repellant qualities.

Untreated

Treated

The "After" photograph does not do the results justice.  The mold, mildew and algae are all dead.  A couple of rainstorms washed the bulk of the corpses away, except at the seams.  But more rain is coming (of course).

Conclusion

This stuff works!  And Jane tried it on the moss on our driveway at a 3% concentration, as another experiment.  It worked there too - the moss is all dead.  In fact, using a 5% solution was probably overkill - my next application on Eolian's canvas will be at 3%, but I think I'll retain the 5% level for the tough-to-kill lichen on the decks.

Chemistry Experiment: Results

Another Chemistry Experiment

Remember these spots?

Look close - there's algae there too

Well, I did some research - it is such a wonderful thing to have the bulk of Man's knowledge at your fingertips!

Guess what?  Algae, moss and lichens suffer grave bodily harm when exposed to a particular class of chemicals.  Well I guess that part is not a surprise.  But this part is:  that family of chemicals is relatively harmless to virtually everything else.  In fact, it is the active ingredient in Bactine:  benzalkonium chlorides.

Now here's the next surprise.  No, you don't have to buy 100 bottles of Bactine and distill it to get the benzalkonium chloride - all you have to do is go to the pool/spa section of your local hardware store and buy a bottle of HTH Algae Guard:

And it was less than $10!

This is a 30% solution, and yet a 2% solution is supposed to be adequate for killing algae/moss/lichen.  

So, the first test is a kind Hippocratic one.  Does this stuff harm the Sunbrella canvas on the boat?  I uncapped the bottle and put some of the straight 30% solution directly on a scrap of our Sunbrella and left it to dry.  After rinsing it out 24 hours later, there was no detectable effect on the canvas.  At 30%, the solution has a blue tint - I suspect this is just a dye for appearances, given its intended use. Our canvas is green - if yours is white, you might want to repeat this test.

The next test is underway right now.  I made up a 6:1 dilution (5%) solution in a hand spray bottle and applied it to a section of the deck with the lichen, and a portion of our canvas which has a liberal infestation of winter algae on the outside.  I also applied it to the inside of the canvas directly over our galley vent where we get the most amazing colonies of...  well, life I guess, apparently feeding on whatever the vent delivers to the canvas.

I'll let you know how this works out...

Update:  Results are here.

Another Chemistry Experiment

The *OLD* Brasso

The Right Stuff

OK, I promise that this is the final post in the disappointingly boring series of Brasso posts.

I received a package from a dear old friend (hi Hogan!) this week containing this: a can of the original formula Brasso!  Apparently there is someone out there on the InterTubes who has hoarded a supply of the old formula and is auctioning it off one can at a time on eBay.  And Hogan  got me one of those cans!

Since I will only use this on the compass binacle and the hub of the wheel, and since I am old, this is probably a lifetime supply for me.  Hooray!  I am no longer at the mercies of the marketing mavens at Brasso Galactic Control!

Thanks Hogan for setting me free!

The *OLD* Brasso

The New Brasso: Redux

Earlier I whined about the recent reformulation of Brasso. Wasn't the old stuff kind of pinkish in color? That would be the result of using rouge as the polishing agent. The new stuff is white. I suspect that the polishing agent is finely ground aluminum oxide - a much harder material than rouge.  But is this good?

Here's the thing.  With rouge (and tripoli, and several other polishing compounds), the polishing agent is designed to break down into finer and finer particles as you (or your machine) rub it.  This means that at the end, the finish can be absolutely mirror-like.  Of course, the polishing agent must be matched to the material.  Rouge, which is quite soft, does a wonderful job of polishing gold, silver and brass.  It takes much, much longer to polish stainless steel with rouge because that metal is so much harder.

But we were talking about brass, for which Brasso is specially formulated (with the inclusion of ammonia).   For brass, the new Brasso's polishing agent is too coarse.  And it is too hard - it doesn't break down.

So this morning I had an idea (probably a cosmic ray went thru my head):  Why not try some of the fiberglass polish/wax that we use on the hull on the brass?  It's polishing agent is designed for soft surfaces, and it does break down even when polishing very soft gel coat, giving a very shiny surface.

Here's the result:

Tho this doesn't photograph well, look at the difference between the top of the binacle, which has been polished with the cleaner/wax, and the bottom which has only been polished with Brasso.  On the bottom, the scratches from the coarse polishing agent are clearly seen; they're gone on the top.

Here's the polish I used:

This is no wipe on/wipe off job.  It takes more work than the Brasso because you get no help from the chemical action of the ammonia.  It takes elbow grease to remove the metal to make a shiny surface and to break down the abrasive.  If your rag is not turning black with the removed metal, then you're not working hard enough.  A power buffer would help a lot.

Oh, and there's a bonus:  the wax.  I have no data yet, but I suspect that the shine will last longer because it is waxed.

The New Brasso: Redux

The new Brasso

The old standby.

 Everybody knows Brasso, right?  That stinky stuff that you can use to almost magically return corroded copper, brass or bronze to a mirror finish...  you know.  The chemical engineer in me wants you to know that the stinky part is really an important part of the magic.  See, there is this thing called the copper-ammonium complex; it makes copper much, much more soluble in water than it would be without the presence of the ammonium ion.  It is this highly increased solubility which helps to remove the surface oxidation, in concert with the fine abrasives also present, and your elbow grease of course.

Well, recently the old can we had here on Eolian finally ran out, and I was forced to buy another. 

I wasn't really surprised when I found that it now comes in a plastic bottle instead of a steel can. 

But I was sorely disappointed with what is now inside the container.  It seems to be far less effective, and the abrasive is considerably coarser than it used to be.  It takes a lot more elbow grease, and due to the coarser abrasive the result is no longer a mirror finish.  Like so many things, the formula was changed - in 2008 - to make the product comply with the new U.S. volatile organic compounds law.  More, it turns out that the version of Brasso sold in other countries is completely different than the current USA version. 

So can any of you UK readers of this blog confirm that this is the good old regular, highly effective, formula? 

Does anybody have a can of the old stuff they would want to sell?

The new Brasso

A little chemistry for non-chemists

So a couple of days ago, I put some chemistry knowledge to work here onboard Eolian.  How you ask?  (Please ask - otherwise this post is going nowhere.)

I noticed that the mirror in our shower was really filthy with soap scum, especially at the bottom.  And so I got out the paint thinner to clean it.

Paint thinner??!?

Let me take you on a very short chemical journey.

What is soap scum?  Well, first let's start with this: what is soap?  Soap is the sodium salt of a long chain organic acid.  Huh?  OK, I guess some definitions are in order.  "Organic" doesn't mean pure, or natural.  Instead it means that it is a carbon-based compound.  Long-chain means, well, it is long, skinny molecule, made up of a chain of carbon atoms strung together.  The acid part means that on one end of this long stringy molecule, there is an organic acid group: C=O-OH, that has been reacted with a strong base, sodium hydroxide in this case.  It is useful for cleaning up greasy things, because the long organic end of the molecule bonds well with the grease, and the ionic acid end dissolves nicely in the water - thus making the grease sort of water-soluble.

OK, so now we know what soap is... what is the scum?  Well, the scum comes from "hard" water - that is, water that contains calcium and or magnesium ions.  See, these ions replace the sodium in the soap molecules, turning the soap into the calcium and magnesium salts of those long chain organic acids.  So what's the rub?  It's this:  the sodium analog is water soluble.  The calcium and magnesium versions are not.  So a precipitate forms:  SCUM.  It feels kind of greasy (that's the organic end of the molecule), and doesn't wash off with water (duh - it's not water soluble). 

People spend lots of money on weird chemicals and abrasives in trying to remove this stuff.  The grocery store remedies all try to work with the tiny ionic end of the molecule; that is not a very effective approach.  The paint thinner works on the 99% part of the molecule: the organic end.  A quick wipe-down with the paint thinner removes the scum amazingly easily.

The scum just wipes off.  Really.

Try it.

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I know I've mentioned this before.  But really, it bears repetition.

A little chemistry for non-chemists

Better living thru chemistry

While Jane was Back Home Again In Indiana, I decided to tackle a pretty disgusting task: cleaning out the shower pan in the aft head.

After living aboard all these years, I am embarrassed to admit that all I have ever done was to clean off the hair catcher. And slowly but surely the pan got dirtier and dirtier. Despite bleach dousings, a layer of hair, bacteria, and what Joe of Tropic Star once termed "human chutney", all in a matrix of soap scum had built up in there

I attacked it first with a scraper, then with a variety of products designed to remove soap scum. Without much luck. Finally I settled in with wet/ dry sand paper - but even that didn't work well - the gummy deposit slowly rolled up in little balls.

While frustratedly sipping a beer, it came to me: work on the other end of the molecule! Soap scum is the insoluble calcium and magnesium salts of long chain organic acids. All of those water-based household products work on the tiny acid/salt end of the molecule, and further require a chemical reaction with it to work effectively. I wetted a rag with mineral spirits and simply wiped the scum off! The mineral spirits dissolved the scum by dissolving the long organic end of the scum. Really, it just wiped off.

With a clean surface, a coat of Brightsides urethane enamel spread cleanly without fisheyes, and really spiffed it up.

I'm having computer problems - this post was created on my iPhone, tediously. Not sure when I will post again until I have the computer working properly again.

Better living thru chemistry

Cleaning the brush: A Chemical Engineer's perspective

Good varnishing brushes are definitely not cheap! The quickest way to ruin one is to let varnish dry in the brush - not something any of us wants to do.

But cleaning a brush is not an easy task. You may think that after triple-rinsing it in fresh paint thinner, the brush is clean. But put it away for a couple of days, and when you go to use it next, the bristles are  disappointingly stiff.

As a Chemical Engineer, I learned several things that have made brush cleaning a lot easier.  (What?  Practical knowledge?  Who knew?):

• Use a counter-current wash system. This keeps the clean end of the system separate from the contaminated end. In a real chemical plant (for example, an alumina refinery) there would be as many as 10 stages or more. Here we will make it simple - we'll use only two.  Do it like this:
  
  • Save an empty paint thinner container. When you rinse out your brush, dump the now-contaminated solvent into this container. Soon you will have lots in there. As soon as you have enough, this is now your stage 1 rinse.  Squeeze out all the varnish you can from the brush, and then clean it thoroughly in the stage 1 rinse solution. Squeeze out all the stage 1 rinse, and wipe the brush on a rag, trying to absorb as much of the stage 1 rinse as possible. Dump the stage 1 rinse back into the stage 1 container.
  • Next, rinse the brush in 3 small changes of clean solvent. As above, drain all the now contaminated fresh solvent into the stage 1 rinse container, wiping the brush nearly dry between rinses.
  This works because even tho the stage 1 rinse is not pure solvent, it is not very far from it, as compared to the varnish itself. Then the pure solvent is only used to rinse out the stage 1 solvent - not raw varnish. There is a secondary effect: some of the varnish (and paint, and stain, and...) precipitates out in the stage 1 rinse container. When it does so, the stage 1 rinse liquid becomes less contaminated. By doing things this way, your use of fresh solvent will go down considerably, even while your brush gets cleaner.
• Exclude one of the reactants, and a chemical reaction will stop.  Curing paint or varnish is a chemical reaction between the resins in the varnish and the oxygen in the air (and water vapor, if there are urethane resins involved).  Exclude air, and the reactions stop.  This is why varnish does not cure in the can.
• Reaction rates roughly double with every 10° rise in temperature. For our purposes here, the converse is the more valuable: reactions rates are halved for every 10° drop in temperature.

Putting these things to work, on a day when I just need to preserve the brush for tomorrow, I give it a quick but thorough rinse in the stage 1 solvent, getting most of the varnish out of the brush, and then wipe it mostly dry on a rag.

Next, I tightly wrap the brush in aluminum foil - this excludes air and water vapor.

Finally, I store the brush on top of one of the holding plates in our freezer.

I really have no idea how long this process will preserve a brush, but I can set a lower limit.  I have pulled a brush out of the freezer (I forgot it was in there) after a month, and it was still pliable, ready to use.

Cleaning the brush: A Chemical Engineer's perspective

Project: Replace the Holding Tank

(Project from 2003)

Now here is a project you never want to do.

This is an uncomfortable subject, but then living aboard forces you to come face to face with most of the aspects of your existence, many of which are "out of sight, out of mind" on shore.

I don't know how long it has been illegal to discharge sewage into Puget Sound, but it has been a long, long time. Accordingly, boats are required to retain sewage and carry it around in a holding tank. I want to invite the folks on shore who are always saying that people who live on boats are polluting the Sound with raw sewage to my next "Replace the Holding Tank Party".

Our holding tank was made of aluminum and was 20 years old. It had begun to seep, especially where someone screwed a bronze fitting into it, causing galvanic corrosion. It needed to be replaced.

First: accessibility. The holding tank is in a small bilge compartment amidships. There are two hatches into this compartment, but neither is very large. Initially, I carefully measured up the space and the hatches and sent the measurements to Adam, who put them into a fancy CAD program. I then gave him a tank catalog (Ronco Plastics has a great catalog!) which he then used to determine which tank(s) might be able to fit thru the hatch, and could then be rotated into position. As it turned out, only very small tanks (less than 20 gallons) would work. So we bit the bullet and cut out the section of floor between the hatches and removed the supporting 4x4 teak beams underneath (the aft beam is still in place in the picture). Now the opening is large enough to accommodate a tank of realistic size: 45 gallons, the same as the existing tank.

Thankfully, there are no pictures of the next step. As preparation, we pumped and rinsed the tank repeatedly, then dumped a gallon of bleach into it and filled it again and left it to steep. Then another pump out to get rid of the bleach solution.

Now the steps were these:

• rent a SawzAll (not gonna use any of MY tools for this...)
• put on old clothes
• climb down in the hole
• cut the tank up
• hand the pieces to Jane

Now mind you, there was only a little smell initially, but after the coating on the inside walls was disturbed, and after the 2" of sludge in the bottom started sloshing around, it was a totally disgusting job. After all the pieces were out, I sloshed bleach over everything and then scooped up the remainder into a bucket. Yes, there was a lot of misc. "stuff" around, behind and under the tank. Then hose out the area after the bleach swab-down. Then shower. Shower. Shower again.

There is a lot more room down there now...

When the custom-manufactured tank arrived (only a week after ordering - Ronco is great!), it barely fit into the back seat of the Fox. It is a rotationally molded polyethylene tank, with 3/8" wall thickness.

The new tank goes on the port side of the compartment instead of the aft bulkhead. In order to keep the tank in place, a substantial framework had to be built and fiberglassed to the hull. One should remember that when full, it will weigh over 400 lb, and will attempt to jump around down there in a seaway. A loose, full holding tank is a thought I really don't want to contemplate.

As the construction proceeded, lots of trial fittings were required, each a fairly major ordeal. For the final fitting, the plumbing was attached (it couldn't be done when the tank was in place), and the tank was installed.







For completion, 2x4 keepers were screwed in place trapping the tank. You can also see that we gave the entire bilge compartment a couple of coats of white paint, which improved appearances immensely.

Final steps: I cut thin (less than 1/8") teak strips and attached them to the raw edges where the floor panel had been cut out. I reinstalled the floor panel, plugged the screw holes, and applied varnish to the unfinished wood. And then finally, sand/refinish the entire floor in the office area to incorporate the newly finished areas.

Project: Replace the Holding Tank

Dread: First really warm day

Yesterday it reached 70 degrees in Seattle, and I was filled with dread for what that meant. Today, the first nice day of the year, would be the day that I would have to change the sacrificial zinc attached to the big nut that holds the prop on the boat. Of course, that zinc is about 4 feet under water. Under 43 degree water, that is.

So you put on a wet suit. I think the ladies can imagine this best: it is like a slightly stretchy pair of very thick panty hose that cover you from ankle to neck. I also have a hood and gloves, making the only part of my body really exposed to the freezing water my ankles (my feet are encased in my swim fins).

With your loins properly girded (whatever that means), you jump in the water... and the suit begins to fill with ice water (it is a wet suit)... from the ankles up, and more importantly, there is a trickle of ice water running down your back.

Your. Heart. Stops.

Finally, the water in the suit gets heated up by your cooling body, and a kind of equilibrium is reached. Your heart restarts (at least so far it has every time), and you breathe like a hard-ridden race horse.

Then you go to work - take the allen key down and fit it into the screw holding the spent zinc (DO NOT DROP the key). Break it loose, and turn it out. By now, you have made perhaps 4 trips down, resurfacing to get more air in between. Finally, the screw and the zinc are in your hand. Place them on the dock, and take the new zinc with the new screw pretreated with Locktite (thank you, Jane!). Breathe deeply and submerge again, attempting to start the screw good enough to leave it while you surface again for air. Maybe you get it, maybe you don't. But you cannot make a mistake - the water is 25 feet deep here - out of reach for me - do not drop anything your are holding in those thick stiff rubber gloves. Another few trips and the screw is tight, and you are done. Yes, you have indeed earned that beer, after you strip off the wet suit in the shower and warm up.

And because it was the first really nice evening of the year, a dock party formed, so the evening had a perfect ending, sharing food, and drinking beer with friends as the sun went down.

Here's the zinc I removed, compared with a new one. It was definitely time for it to go. And now I can look forward to warm weather, dread-free.

Dread: First really warm day