Water Tank Removal
I have indeed removed and replaced the starboard water tank, but not the forward tank. My tank developed a crack and leak from the bottom necessitating the change. As an aside, if all you Catalina 30 owners out there have your starboard tank set up the way mine was, yours too will eventually crack. In my boat, the line from the forward tank runs underneath the starboard tank. To accomplish this the bottom of the tank is raised about 1" from the sole. To do this, the rocket scientists who built the boat placed two 3-4" blocks of wood epoxied to the floor under the tanks to hold the tank off the floor, thus creating a tunnel for the hose, AND pressure points for a crack to develop. As for the replacing of it. Do you have brut force at your disposal? That was the method I used to break apart the frame! Yes, thats what you have to do. You need to pretty much completely break away the forward end of the "box". the sides that keep it from sliding up can be bent back, cracking the fiberglass tape and therefore allowing them to hinge back (I had to remove one of the boards on the side and left the other one hinged). With this done, the tank can be "jack-assed" out of there. Read the part number from the old tank when ordering a new one and Catalina was very good in getting me the exact replacement - about $60-70 + shipping. But that's not the hard part. The hard part is how you secure the new tank in place. First, before you do that, deal with the 2 blocks the tank rests on (see above) by laying on top of the blocks a piece of 1/4" marine plywood cut about 3-4" wide and about 1-2" shorter than the length of the tank. This will effectively eliminate the pressure points. Then decide on what to do. One option is to simply use fiberglass tape and epoxy to rebuild the frame around the tank. This, in retrospect is probably the easiest method. Being incredibly compulsive and thinking that I might want to get the tank out easily again someday (after all the first tank only lasted 15 years!), I constructed a bracket that attaches to the fiberglass frame of the setee and which holds the forward and starboard sides of the tank in place. All I have to do is undo 4 bolts and the tank will come out. Hard to describe the construction but if you are really interested I can take a picture and email it to you. Probably easier to just rebuild the box with fiberglass tape and epoxy and if necessary new plywood boards. I never have messed with the forward tank. Have you tried filling it with bleach for a few days????? Alan Bier, C30, 3593 One More Hour
