Cleaning an inaccessible bilge
"When I put in bilge cleaner and slosh it around as best I can, then rinse with fresh water I get oily water seeping out for days. Any better way of handling this?" Rinse a LOT more. And if the water seeping out is still producing an oily sheen, you're either not using enough bilge cleaner...or you're not leaving it in to slosh around long enough to do the job...or you're using one that doesn't work. Cleaning a dirty bilge isn't just a "pour in a few 'glugs' of bilge cleaner, stir it up for a few minutes, and then hose it out"....a thorough bilge cleaning can take a gallon of concentrated detergent bilge cleaner, a full day of sailing with a lot of tacking to turn the whole thing into a Maytag, and then an hour of high pressure rinsing, either with a garden hose with the nozzle on or a power washer. And if you don't get all the oil the first time, do it again. Once the water that continues to seep out is finally clean water, then mop it up with a manual bilge pump (the bicyle pump kind used to pump out dinghies) and a sponge...and leave all the hatches open so it can really dry out. It's like doing dishes...you're not gonna get a skillet clean with no more effort than it takes to wash a wine glass. But most people only want to put "wine glass" effort into it. However, unlike doing dishes, once you get the bilge really clean, it doesn't take a lot of effort to keep it that way--IF you'll do it. That doesn't mean doing nothing for two years, then throwing in a little bilge cleaner...it does mean repairing anything that's leaking oil...putting a pad or a pan under the engine when you change the oil, and every month or so giving it the kind of washing out that you're trying to get away with when it's really dirty. Fwiw, when I bought my boat the bilge was totally disgusting..5 years of primordial slime, oil and God knows how many or what kind of new life forms. I can expose 100% of it...yet it took me a full day--with a pressure washer!--and 3 gallons of bilge cleaner to get it really clean...and another full day with all the hatches open to dry it out. But that's the kind of effort we all have to be willing to make if we're gonna own boats that don't stink.
