Boat maintenance - fuel tank

One of the things you get used to when you own a boat is repairing things.  I've had an issue that's been giving me trouble for some time: fuel filters getting clogged causing the engine to run poorly or not at all.  Not good.

When we brought the boat up the coast back at the end of February the engine ran fine until we were off the Monterey coast (after we had some rough seas off Pt. Conception).  Engine rpm's dropped and the engine finally quit.  We did a quick change of the Racor water separator/fuel filter and the on engine fuel filter and got things running again without issue. Problem solved?  I wasn't so sure so I had the fuel and tank polished.  OK, problem solved?  A couple of months ago after a very rough beat up the Bay during the Moonlight Marathon race I was delivering the boat up to the City front when, again, the engine could not maintain cruising rpm's.  Fortunately I was able to limp into the SF marina.  But since I got there late and didn't have any filters on board (a situation that won't happen in the future) by the time we could get things repaired the next morning we missed the start of the race.  OK, message received - the tank really needs to be cleaned but we only have a single 3" access hole in the tank and the tank has two baffles.  Time to put in access plates and really see what's going on in there.

look what we found (before cleaning)

after cleaning

three new 6" access holes

8" cover plates installed - job complete

So we drilled 6" access holes to access each baffled portion of the tank.  Found lots of black crap between the first and second baffle - no wonder my filters were getting clogged.  We steam cleaned the tank and buttoned everything up.  Those are 8" access plates manufactured by Sea Built. I can highly recommend them.  Problem solved?  I hope so!!  So far a 3 hour motor to the City front and an 8 hour motor back from HMB - engine running fine.  Fingers crossed!!