LeoKa
Guru
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2017
- Messages
- 1,202
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Ironsides
- Vessel Make
- 54' Bruce Roberts steel sailboat hull, coastal LRC, 220HP CAT 3306.
You can open them from outside perfectly well if you don't mind the expense of welding it back together after. If these are tanks and not concrete ballast as I would have suspected you'll want a good look inside after the time they've gone uninspected. On steel commercial boats I've owned the ballast tanks are opened annually for inspection and cleaning, fuel and freshwater as well.
I bought the boat less then a year ago. I don't think those tanks were ever opened. The original builder decided to flood them (water or oil?) and use them as ballast. The boat has 4 tanks. Each 400 gallons. The PO only used the side tanks in the ER (2 x 400 g ). I want to use the keel tanks again for fuel.
I do not want to open them from below. I just want to use some kind of scope or camera to look inside as much as possible through the pipes.