New Member from New England

[AJA]

Hi- my name is John, but our boat is named AJA, so I'll be using that as my reference. My wife and I and our two kids sail out of Narragansett Bay and we have been cruising New England for the past 25 years. I found our 37' Irwin center cockpit ketch at a salvage yard in Massachusetts, and have spent the last two years getting her seaworthy. Every system from rigging, to plumbing, to the engine has been changed, and she has turned out beautifully. There's still a million things to do, but of course with a boat that is always true.We had our last boat, and Irwin 28, for 18 years, and when I sold her, I had her ALMOAST exactly as I wanted her.

I came across this site looking for information on cleaning my fuel tank. AJA had been stored outside a barn in Maine for 18 years just before I bought her,l and she had a 100 Gallon tank full of diesel fuel. Over the past year I've managed to whittle that down to about 65 gallons, but there is no access to physically clean the tank. I've been hearing horror stories about sludge and bugs, and water, and have been wondering if anyone has any ideas on getting to my tank. I did take the precaution of using a racor filter with a 2 micron screen, and I have a fuel pressure guage on it, and I watch the water separator, .... and even though we've been through our share of pounding chop out on Vinyard Sound and Rhode Island Sound, the tank hasn't thrown an embolis my way....(yet). The fuel itself looks good to me, and the engine runs great, but I can't believe that after 18 years on the hard there's not a city of creatures living on the bottom of my tank and swimming in my fuel that mean me harm. My mechanictold that if I'm not going to have the tank professionally cleaned, that I should expect to go through a few filters each season.....any ideas?

AJA