When you have this much water in your diesel, what do you do? You call in a man who has a very big pump and a whole array of filters!
We first met Alastair of Viking Marine when we called him out in an ’emergency’ a few weeks ago. After I failed to get the engine started, I suspected we had a bit of water in our diesel. ‘A bit’, it turns out, was an understatement. I’m just pleased I wasn’t being stupid and with this much water in the diesel, it was pretty much outside my control.
The Diesel Cleaning Process
Alastair proposed taking out 50 litres as a starter, 25 from each tank.
Since diesel floats to the top and water sinks to the bottom, shoving the pipes down in the corner of the tanks should extract most of the water.
This is all very well if you have an inspection hatch. We didn’t, so Alastair cut us a new one, so to speak.
After this initial stage we then had to drag Happidaze down to the fueling pontoon to fill up the tanks.
With full tanks we then took Happidaze back to her slip to continue the process. This took many hours as we cycled over 1,000 litres through the pump and filter system.
You can see the entire process, plus an update on the interior of Happidaze after moving all our crap on board in our latest episode.
Catch the video here:
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