BLOG: Is a petrol inboard a ticking time bomb?

ON this occasion, dear reader, it's time for a more responsible offering, in direct contrast with the writer's usual caustic, acerbic yet tongue-in-cheek rants about the idiosyncrasies and tribulations of our industry. The subject this time is deadly serious and has been prompted by the Coroner’s Report just delivered in Melbourne in relation to the fireball and conflagration which engulfed a vintage, petrol-powered Halvorsen at Pier 35 on May 3rd, 2008, and which resulted in the deaths of two elderly parents and the subsequent total disintegration of the lives of their son and his now ex-partner.

What you will not see in this piece is any detailed reference to the case or any probing examination of, for instance, who sold what to whom, for how much and in what supposed condition. All involved parties have literally been damaged and scarred (both physically and mentally) for good and their lives will never be the same again. Just for the record (and although the writer is betimes given to fits of hyperbole and sometimes “flowery” prose), it would be no understatement to say that the graphic television images of the distraught, anguished and hysterically inconsolable owner being ferried away from the scene on a stretcher were, for me, akin to the shots of frenzied 911 survivors racing from the Twin Towers or the notorious image of the little Vietnamese girl running in anguish down the road after the napalm attack. That’s the stark reality of how that news piece affected me.

By way of a small digression from the above, here’s a brief example of an incident with built-in fuel tanks which was personally witnessed by yours truly. It concerns an outboard-powered boat, so you’d think the possibility of a “bomb in the bilges” was greatly minimised, but read on….

About fifteen years ago, a friend of The Skipper purchased a fairly old 21-foot sportsboat which had originally been part of an outboard distributor’s V6 press fleet in the late 1970s, but which had been re-powered with a newish EFI 2-stroke. The boat had been bought very cheaply but yours truly never liked it. The wiring was like a bird’s nest that had been flung to the winds; the hydraulic steering leaked; the boat had water seepage between the topsides and hull sides but, above all, there was a constant, strong, pervasive petrol odour. This odour never, ever abated, even after floorboards and seats were lifted daily to give regular aeration. Anyway, one day the owner was standing in the boat beside a quiet (thankfully, as it turned out) rural launch ramp, trying to get the bilge pump to work to expel the water that always lapped over the low transom. Which brings us back to the matter of the wiring…

As the bilge pump declined to activate via the switch, the owner foolishly decided to literally ‘jumpstart” proceedings by connecting the bare pump wires directly to the battery terminals. But of course, as anybody who has ever jump-started a car (without securing the positive clip first) will know, there will be a flurry of sparks before the clips grip the battery terminals. That’s what happened in this case, and of course the sparks only had to meet the fuel vapour for there to be a conflagration of immense proportions. There was a WHOOOMMMFF similar to a skyscraper backdraught and a pall of roaring flames and dense, acrid smoke which left the boat burned to the waterline in less than 15 minutes. Luckily the hapless owner had abandoned ship with an alacrity that would have done Linford Christie proud, but once he had scrambled shell-shocked to safety at the top of the boat ramp, the realization of the closeness of his encounter caused him to deposit his stomach contents at the high-water mark.

So where this is going is that yours truly (normally an old-school maverick with a healthy disregard for authority and total disdain for excessive legislation or regulations) firmly believes that the time has well and truly come for mandatory (State or Federal) inspection of internal/inbuilt fuel systems on boats of a certain age. It would probably be OK to restrict such a regulation to petrol inboard and sterndrive-powered boats only, as on outboards (with the very rare exception of the case documented above), all the spark-igniting action takes place way aft, or outside the boat itself. As to what boats would be relevant and at what exact age, those are issues which require rational, astute deliberation and judgement, but The Skipper would greatly favour a) mandatory inspection at, say, 10 years old (but ideally 5) and b) mandatory inspection when any used inboard/sterndrive boat is being purchased – regardless of age.

So who would carry out this stringent inspection? The dealer or agent selling the boat? No way! Get real. Should it be an independent, accredited workshop representing the brand of engine installed in the boat? Possibly. Or should it be a mobile, State-employed Waterways/Transport Authority specialist? Maybe that’s the best, most impartial and professional route - who knows? But one thing is certain: such a regulation is undoubtedly heading for the statute books in Victoria, so the rest of us better realise that this nautical equivalent of an automobile safety certificate will eventually be a boating fact of life.

Did you know that even one of the world’s leading PWC manufacturers strongly advises removal of all seats and storage bins prior to setting off, to allow thorough ventilation of the inner recesses of the hull? And that’s on a modern, tech-savvy piece of blue-chip engineering that doesn’t have metres of degraded, corroded metal pipes, perished or delaminated rubber hoses, deteriorating or rotting steel or aluminium fuel tanks, and hose clips that have been taken off so many times that they could be tightened by thumbnail. You just cannot take risks with marine fuel systems any longer – what with ethanol, sulphur and all the other additives in gasoline today. It’s a safe bet that any marine fuel system from the past decade or earlier is on a steady course of erosion and deterioration immediately after fill-up.

Boating must, to an extent, be free of the minutiae of overly restrictive legislation, but if those poor souls on board that boat at Pier 35 on that ill-fated day in May 2008 are to be properly remembered, they must be remembered for the epoch-making precedent that their tragic demise helped instigate.