Hi, Lee - On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 12:45:46AM -0600, Lee Huddleston wrote: > Ben, > > Your story about a fire onboard was scary. I am glad that you were > able to get it under control.
Thanks. Man, it was touch and go for a while. At the time, I was just pumping out all the effort that my body was capable of, and didn't have time to be afraid - but, yeah, that could have been a disaster. > I, too, own a steel-hulled boat and > have been known to tout the advantages of steel when given the least > opportunity. You have just given me one more reason to like steel. > The contents may be flammable but at least the hull is not. I've got pictures of a boat fire in St. Augustine; a boat called "Miss Pattie" had just gone through the bridge, and suddenly there was a loud "WHUMP" and black smoke started coming out of their engine compartment. They got off almost immediately - the dophin tours boat was right nearby and got the guy and two women off - but the date stamps on the image files tell me that it was blazing *to the waterline* within 90 seconds of my first shot (which was within 15 seconds of the "WHUMP".) It burned like frozen gasoline. Here it is, with the dolphin boat still nearby: http://x.co/Llpq > I can foresee a potential chink in the armor, however. If a person > uses Marlon thru-hulls and seacocks to avoid electrolysis problems, > the Marlon could melt or burn, letting the water in. Do you have any > solution for this? I really don't want to use brass on or near the > steel and stainless steel looses its good qualities if it is > underwater and cannot get oxygen. Whenever possible (discharge lines) > I am planning to weld mild steel pipe directly to holes in the hull > and then only adding a seacock to the pipe above the waterline. Of > course, for intake lines this is probably not feasible. I avoid Marelon like the plague. Nothing that I can tear off by hand - and I'm a pretty strong guy, so that's a relatively high standard - belongs below the waterline as a functional system on my boat. Yikes, even the thought makes me recoil. :) I minimized my through hulls (another big advantage of a composting head), and welded up stainless standpipes that go above the waterline for the rest (still need to do my cockpit drains and rudder tube, though - that'll be this summer, maybe.) SS fatigue is not an issue when you use heavy-wall pipe and it's a non-stressed member. I then bought brand-new top-quality 1.5" SS ball valves on eBay for $30 each (usually over $200 apiece, but you can always find good deals on them if you wait) and put them on. Done, forever, and I don't ever have to think about it again - which is my definition of a boat system that's well handled. As for the intakes, it doesn't seem to be a problem with the one that I have - but it's got a big manual pump sucking from it, so that may not be a good comparison. Here's a thought, from something I saw on a home-built 75' aluminum boat in the islands: the guy had built a seachest - a 2' x 2' box that came above the waterline and had a lid held on with two wingnuts. Most of his through hulls (not the head outtake, of course) came out of that, and he could clean them just by taking the lid off. All the valves were mounted horizontally, and had SS wire attached to the handles, which then lead up into the cockpit, which I didn't quite get until he explained it to me. It all came together into a loop up there, and he could cut off all the valves at once if there was flooding anywhere in the boat! Thinking about it now, it would also handle any fire-based scenarios, too. Lots of *really* *smart* design on that boat - but then, the guy had been running a machine shop and custom-making stuff for the aerospace industry for most of his life. Ben -- OKOPNIK CONSULTING Custom Computing Solutions For Your Business Expert-led Training | Dynamic, vital websites | Custom programming 443-250-7895 http://okopnik.com http://twitter.com/okopnik _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
