New to DE 38 and Question about Fuel Tank General Forum Forums

I have to finish repairing our fuel tank and have put a 12 gallon portable tank in the foot well of the cockpit with a board mounted above it at deck level and painted with the same non skid as the deck. It fills in the space between the front of the foot well and the steering pedestal. Makes the cockpit deck one large expanse forward of the steering pedestal. Even after I get the tank repaired I will leave that in as we like the deck like that.

I don't see an issue with a fuel tank under the quarter berth. At least a smaller one. too much weight there will affect balance a little bit as it is off center but honestly if we are talking 25 gallons that is less than 200 lbs. If you custom made a fiberglass one to the shape of the forward lower area you would end up making the tank turn into a flat floor area there that would actually make it easier and nicer to use as storage. Only downside to putting a permanent tank there is that there is some wiring that goes from the chart table to the engine room such as battery cables and electrical and electronic runs of wires. You would either need to re-run them to make them accessible after you do the tank or make them inaccessible and if something goes wrong you will just have to cut the wires/cables and run new at that time.

They are aluminum. typically it is the bottom of the tank that rots out. This is due to them placing the tank flush on the floor of the middle bilge area under the galley. The standard design allows water and debris from the anchor locker to flow back through the bilges the full length of the boat. Because the water and fuel tanks are flush with the bilge floor sand, earth and other debris as well as stuff that works its way through the hatches over time in the floor and dead insects and insect droppings will build up under and along the forward edge of the tanks where they contact the floor. This layer of earth/debris holds moisture in it long term and leads to corrosion of the tanks there. If they had simple placed a few longitudinally place 1 inch thick strips of fiberglass into the floor to raise the tanks just that much above the floor it would have allowed all that stuff to just flow under the tanks without ever sitting against them. The materials are top notch and show it everywhere that didn't happen. I have no issues in my 79 DE39 with any of the fittings or top and sides of the tank other than at the bottom forward edge. I found out the hard way when I used a pressure washer to clean that area of the bilge to try and blow all that crud that we couldn't reach past the tank to the lower bilge so we could pump it out. That part worked but pressure washer blew all the corroded aluminum off also and went right through the that front lower edge of the tank. Fun times.

We ended up isolating the bilge from the rest of the boat with a drain hose leading to a dedicated forward bilge pump. This leaves the bilges bone dry. If replacing a tank I would raise it an inch off the floor on strips to allow it to stay out of contact with the floor.

That is very interesting.