The water tanks, being designed to carry water (I know, it sounds like
"What color was George Washington's white horse?" [grin]), seem to hold
up very well. I can't recall having heard of many complaints about them
save, perhaps, a gripe that one compartment on the starboard tank (there
are, IIRC, two baffles, splitting the tanks into thirds as far as access
for cleaning goes) is hard to get to but that's all I can recall.

The cost of replacing a diesel tank is, frankly, all over the map,
depending on how you want to handle the job. Taking the tank out isn't
the worst of it (it can be cut up, although it's a messy job), it's
getting the new one(s) in. Basically, the joinery for the galley is
built on top of the aft end of the tank so some of it has to come out to
put in a single tank (or you have to rip up part of the sole to slide a
tank in - equally ugly). Putting in two tanks avoid this problem but
means plumbing the tanks properly. To say nothing of having tanks
fabricated (choices in material, finish, etc.). Long story short, there
is no one receipe for the job and a dollar (or time and materials)
number at the bottom.

Otherwise, as I indicated, the sorts of things you can look for include
general routine maintenance issues. Our 35 is now 21 years old and
generally doing very nicely. We've had to replace sails and running
rigging in the past few years but these are, after all, essentially
expendable items common to any sail boat. We had the decks sanded down
two years back, but that was to clean up neglect from the previous
owner, not an aging issue, per se.

Cheers,
   Rick Emerson

Jess Vail wrote:

> Thank you, Rick. These are the two areas I expected to hear about...
> and perhaps the water tanks as well. Any idea what it would cost to
> replace the tanks?
>

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Received on Tue Aug 15 21:37:21 2006