I was down at the boat a couple weeks back and a member of the yacht club and former Tanzer 22 owner stopped by for a chat. During our conversation he mentioned that the bow of the boat was sitting low in the water, he was concerned that Miss Megan was taking on water. I hadn’t noticed any water, but I also hadn’t noticed the bow was low, so I did a check, and I didn’t find any water where water wasn’t supposed to be.

About an hour later, just before I was going to head home, I remember reading a post on the Tanzer 22 Facebook group about someone else’s boat sitting the same way. One of the possible causes of this was the black water tank in the bow was full. I checked the tank, but I couldn’t tell if there was anything in it. I came back the next day with a big flashlight, I turned the flashlight on and placed it down on the tank, so the light beam was entering the tank. Luckily the blackwater tank on this boat is white so some light entered the tank, and I could see light bouncing of the water.

While I couldn’t see the water, I could tell it was clear. I then did some digging and found some old photo’s posted by the previous owner to the Tanzer 22 FB group. In the photo’s it appears that he had a larger 2 stroke engine on Miss Megan, a bit more digging found out that he replaced that motor with a smaller 4 stroke 5hp propane motor. Clear water in the black tank made sense, it was being used as ballast to offset the weight of the motor. I assume he forgot about the water when he replaced the motor.

Now, how to get the water out. Since I was quite confident the tank didn’t contain black water, I tried opening the through hull drain. The gate valve wouldn’t budge, so the easy solution wasn’t going to work, and now I have something else to work on over the winter. I could get a pump-out but that seemed rather expensive for not black water. A few more days of thinking and research, could I adapt a home for a manual bilge pump? Do I just wait until haul out and work on the gate valve? Then I found a possible solution, a battery powered liquid transfer pump. The pump was fairly cheap (about $20) on Amazon, so I ordered it.

Ok, now how to get the pump into the tank. The Saturday after the pump arrived, I got to work. I was able to remove the hose attached to the top front of the tank, I think it’s a vent hose. With the hose removed I unscrewed the barbed hose adaptor (thank God it wasn’t attached with 5200). Now the moment of truths, I took a sniff and there was no foul odour so clean(ish) water theory was looking really good. I tried the liquid pump to see if it would fit…. Success!

With the pump in the tank, I grabbed my bucket and turned the pump on and out poured clear clean water. I pumped out as much water as I could and safely disposed of the water (just in case) Miss Megan is now sitting much better in the water.

With that issue resolved the question is do I remove the black water tank and use that space for something I’ll actually use?