Passport Owners Association For Passport Owners and our Friends

Gary, That quote was WAY HIGH! We got both tanks done, a job that took about 4 hours for about $400. Had a coffee can full of crud. Incidentally, the water is likely condensate from air pulled into the tank as the fuel is consumed, especially in damp climates.
Billy Manana

What works best will depend on the waters you are sailing. On the Chesapeake we have a 45lb CQR that works fine under all conditions with only 40' of chain and 200' of nylon rode. Second anchor is a 40lb Bruce that only gets used in hurricane season.
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Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 9:23 PM

On Anthem, we use a 42 lb CQR, which holds well in Chesapeake mud, but
not without entertaining the anchorage. My most successful approach
is to pick the spot to end up in. I then go to the far shore, load
the anchor in the dinghy and take it as far up the beach or yard as I
have chain. I then drag back across the anchorage to my spot. By the

On "Journey", we have been quite pleased with a 45# Delta in all conditions
here in the California Channel Islands and also all over in Mexico. Prior
to that we had a 44# Bruce for many years that worked well, but, the Delta
is better all around especially in grassy bottoms where a Bruce fails. We

Up here in AK, our water is very deep and the bottom is variable: rock, sand, gravel mostly. We've had great luck with a 45 # CQR and 300 feet of 5/16 High Test chain. If the water is less than 100 feet deep, we consider ourselves lucky. At times, we've even tied up to shore since it can be so deep. Drop over the fenders, sling some trees, relax with a cocktail. For backup, we have a Fortress 35 # that we keep stowed below. Our 1984 P40 has a stern anchor locker that holds 40 feet of chain and 300 feet of 3/4 nylon and that's been sufficient.

Ooh, one of the religious questions reopened ...
I have a 20-kilo Bruce and have never had a
problem anchoring. I´d like to have a 30-kilo. I
have a 35- or 40-lb CQR as a second anchor and a
large-ish Danforth as a third (stern) anchor,
which has worked well for me on the relatively
few occasions I´ve had to use it.

Oh Billy Manana...you do have a way with words. As you said..."It's a
little like brushing your teeth before bedtime...preventative maintenance."
You're so right on!
We're back in San Carlos finishing the decommissioning on Warren Peace for
this season...lots of sand on the deck from sitting at Marina Seca.

I am a brand new owner of Harmony an '87 P40. I am a fairly
experienced sailor but will have lots of questions. For starters I am
curious about the size of anchors being used on P40's especially
CQR's. I have a 35lb from my old boat a 35 footer but worry this is a
bit light for the P40. What are others using.

Our running backstays were previously attached to padeyes on the side
decks when not in use. One of these pulled out of the deck, and we
need to decide whether to replace the padeyes (with backing plates) or
go with some other way to store these. Just wondering what other
people do with their running backstays?

Well, squirting by the professional did not do it. I had to get in
there with a scraper to take care of it.
Also satisfying when over, but I had a ring of bruises on my arm from
working though that darned hole.
M

The portable fuel polisher works kind of like you describe, Michael. It has a suction hose connected to a debris filter connected to a fuel filter/water separator (8 micron I think) connected to vacuum gauge connected to an electric fuel pump connected to a pressure/output hose. I opened the inspection ports. One tank had about 5 gallons and the other was about half full. Then I inserted the suction hose at the low point of the emptier tank, then used the pressure hose to rinse (squirt) all surfaces of the inside. After a few cycles of cleaning out the filters, I pumped the fuel from the fuller tank into the emptier one, except about 5 gallons and cleaned it the same way until the filters quit clogging.

I have the dual 500 Racor as other on the list do. They work great. It has
a vacuum guage on the top to show the amount of clogging if any for the
filter or filters in operation. You can easily switch from one to the
other. On the P42 the tanks are in the aft end of the boat and gravity
feeds the filters. One simply opens the top, drops in a new filter, crack

What I found is that polishing the fuel is only the start. If you have
not done it before, it is very helpful to open the inspection port,
empty the tank, and scrub it.
I collected 5 gallons of scaley sludge that way.
I would never advise this, but fuel can be filtered through a coffee
filter and put back into the tank. Of course, it makes your coffee

Bill, your point about cleaning the tanks is well taken. After my little mishap last summer, I borrowed a friend's portable fuel polisher and cleaned both tanks. All together, I removed about a cup of rusty, scaley, gritty debris. Most of it was caught by the coarse filter screen. There was no water, but I assumed the rust was from rusting of the inside of the iron tanks. Perhaps it was introduced into the tanks at sometime in the past from a primitive fuel source. I have spot-checked the fuel docks I use (Washington state) with a Baja filter and never found any contaminants.

Phil, Bill & all,
Well, I went to the cited website and read up on all the "fuel polishing
" systems, especially the Algae X system (incredibly expensive), and have to
say that this whole area reminds me of polishing one's shoes when you are
standing in pig shit.
I say this consequent to having had Wind Witch's fuel tanks aggressively

What you cited from West Marine is the 75500 max,
which differs from the fgx only in its inclusion
of a stainless steel bowl and its higher price.
The metal is to protect against burn-through
which is not an issue if the filters aren´t in
the engine compartment. It´s also not a requirement for pleasure yachts.

Warren Peace has a dual Racor system with a four way valve. Both off, both
on, or either on. I've had it for years and it works great. You can change
a filter with the engine running by just switching over to the other
filter...very simple. I have an electric fuel pump with an on/off switch
plumbed on the entire system which pressurizes the Racors so you can bleed

The main thing you need is the specially build 4- way valve. On the
Racor 500 its built onto the handle. My original factory built had two
ball valves that didn't allow one filter to be changed underway
because air entered the system if one filter was opened. What happened
is one of the bowls formed a hairline crack at the very bottom on the

The photo from the Morgan site is just what I was looking for....thanks Phil. The issue on parallel vs. series comes from some information I saw on the boatdiesel.com website. One camp says having the ability to switch over from a clogged filter to a clean one is the way to go. The other camp says having two filters in series, with the sizes stepping down, works more efficiently. The term "layering" was used. The first filter in line gets the big stuff and the second gets the small stuff. With one small-mesh filter, if a large piece of gunk covers many small holes, then they are not available anymore to catch the small pieces of gunk.

Maybe I'm missing something here. I was under the impression that the final
filter in the system on all these diesel systems is on the diesel itself
(certainly true for the Nanni and the Yanmar) That last filter is usually 2
micron. The Racor has been used as a "coarse" prefilter, usually 10 micron.