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Feeling pretty awful about this, I've been really slow on the uptake and slow to appreciate the extent to which something isn't right. Hope someone can advise. Not sure quite when I first noticed something amiss, but I think it was just after RCR did my engine service a couple of weeks ago. I remember running the bilge pump and thinking the water looked a bit 'milky'. I didn't think at the time that it looked oily as the dirty/discoloured water seemed to form a cloud rather than a slick when it hit the canal - like a cup of tea being tipped into the washing up water. However, a couple of times since then while cruising I've been in a lock and noticed oil or similar rising to the surface behind the boat in little pools. I think this is after the bilge pump has run. Yesterday and today I was aware of quite a significant slick forming around the boat while stationary - not the first time I've thought there was a bit of dirty water alongside the boat when moored, but the first time it's been clearly our doing and clearly oil of some sort. Today in particular it was an unmistakeable, 'rainbow' slick. The area directly under the engine is pretty dry, so I don't think it's something from that area contaminating the rest of the bilge. One possibility I have wondered about - I had a failed attempt at re-packing the stern gland greaser around the same time as the engine service but the grease wasn't densely enough packed - could I have overgreased the stern gland leading to grease in the bilge water, by screwing the greaser down multiple times because I wasn't feeling the right level of resistance? And could this account for the amount of contamination I was still seeing today? I also used a grease gun on the rudder bearing the other day - again, could that be anything to do with it? Like I say I feel awful that I've not noticed the scale of the issue till now and that I didn't take more care earlier on to investigate. We've been cruising pretty solidly and if I'm honest I guess I didn't really recognise 'I wonder if there's a bit of oil/diesel in the bilge water' as a red flag issue until I started searching the forum this evening. Anyway, we are where we are and I just need to know what I should be doing now to avoid causing any more contamination of the cut and to identify any ongoing problem we might have.
In my view excess grease MIGHT give a rainbow on the water but no much else. The milky description sounds as if you have something in the bilge that has emulsifier some fuel or oil. Bilgex and other bilge cleaners can do this. Has anything fallen over down there? It sounds as if your stern gland (not the greaser) needs tightening/adjusting. The area under the engine should be sealed so oil and fuel drips can not contaminate the bilge.
Your bilge pump should not be coming on intermittently whilst cruising. Get the stern gland sorted, adjusted or repacked. It should at worst only drip one drop every few hours if it is correct. Do you grease after you have stopped? Or before you set off? Some greases are slightly water soluble, they are after all soaps. Is it just grease from the gland?
I doubt its grease from the gland but it could be I suppose. Is your fuel tank built into the counter right at the back of the boat? I think I would suspect that and try to eliminate it if I could but then I am a bit of a pessimist.
My guess too for the rainbow slicks. Rusted-through rudder tube weeping is favourite. The milky bilge water is a different problem I reckon.
I do get a bit of the grease from the stern tube floating round the boat some mornings. Doesn't take much to spread quite a distance. And RCR blokes are quite capable of dropping a load of oil into your bilge while doing a service, following up with a squirt of washing up liquid to disperse it, so unless you watched them like a hawk the whole time, I suspect that may have something to do with it.
Stern tube grease extruded forms things that look like slugs. Those that extrude externally and sink to the bottom, where they stay undisturbed i reckon.
Hmm, I didn't know that. I thought it was supposed to drip steadily while cruising, with this being stopped (or drastically slowed) by a twist of the greaser when stopping for the day - which yes, I do. The RCR chap claimed to have adjusted the stern gland at the service before last, but clearly this hasn't been adequate if indeed it should barely be dripping. Guess I'd better have someone look at it and do what actually needs doing. Is it just grease from the gland? I wish I knew. Yes that's where the tank is. Suspect it of what and eliminate it how? Are you suggesting the rudder tube is leaking direct into the cut rather than into the bilge? Only as far as I know the slicks have only appeared after the bilge pump has run. What the heck is a rudder tube anyway and why would it have diesel in it? Anyway it sounds like someone ought to investigate properly really. Meanwhile - what can I, as a complete ignoramus, do to keep whatever nasties are in the bilge out of the cut, given that the bilge pump is going to go off at some point if I just set off cruising? Puppy pads on top of the liquid to soak up floating oil? Pump out into a bucket (and dispose of where?)
I think Tony is being overly strict. All my stern glands drip once every few seconds or minute or so when running. Completely stop when not turning. Yes this. The rudder tube is the 6" diameter vertical tube through the counter the rudder stock passes through, on its way to connecting to the rudder blade. This passes straight through the fuel tank and is terribly prone to corrosion as is rarely blacked, leading to fuel leaking into the cut. Errrrr... turn the bilge pump OFF! And keep your nasty oily water inside your boat.... sorry to be harsh. Or yes pump out into a bucket. Dispose of oil-contaminated liquid at your local recycling centre or at your home marina. Most have disposal facilities. This is a big deal. You can't go on discharging oil and/or diesel into the cut. I thin k you have two separate problems. Sadly you need to deal with this NOW, before cruising any more.
Yeah I think I'll get in touch with the marina round the corner in the morning... if they have disposal facilities that is somewhere I could actually walk to with a bucket or six of 'orrible water. Happy to turn the bilge pump off if not cruising and so stern gland not dripping; my concern is that if I had to actually go somewhere to get whatever this is diagnosed/sorted, given the rate the stern gland drips, with the bilge pump off there would be a risk of water properly building up including directly under the engine...
Does this mean you have a bilge pump directly under the engine? Not allowed under BSS! More practically, your stern gland (unless it needs re-packing) just needs tightening up. Two studs either side of it, each with pairs of locked nuts. Un-lock the nuts from each other then tighten each nut up by perhaps several turns (17mm spanner) until 'fairly tight'. Then lock them together again. The gland leaking should broadly stop. Make sure the prop shaft can still be turned by twisting it with your hand. If not, you've tightened too much.
Eh? Not following why that implies a bilge pump under the engine... I just mean, if the water building up on three sides of the engine bit (drip tray?) builds up enough, eventually it's going to slosh into it, surely? Anyway, yes, thanks for the tip on the stern gland.
Because you said the stern gland drip leads to a build up of water under the engine, which the thread implied to me the bilge pump was evacuating. But given what you've said about it only flooding the tree sides around the engine, this is fine. In which case the oil slick will not be caused by the bilge pump. Therefore you have an unrelated problem too. E.g. the rudder tube.
There is the possibility that RCR dropped some diesel into the bilge when they did the service. As pumps will not fully drain the bilge just maybe the rainbow is the residue of that. Try sponging the bilge out and degreasing it. Then put a couple of white oil pads down there to absorb the residual oily stuff. Puppy pads or disposable nappies may only absorb water and leave hydrocarbons in the bilge. Only after that if the rainbow is still there suspect the rudder tube. Further thought re the milky water - could this be an old all in one bilge boat with shower draining into the bilge?
Unless, presumably, oil/diesel/grease is getting or has got into the rest of the bilge somehow, the bit not under the engine, due to a spill or leak somewhere. I still think - although I'm not sure of much - that the oily canal water is something we're seeing only after the bilge pump has run. It's not like we're trailing diesel down the canal after us; more a case of the boat sitting in a slick when stationary. Other than the bilge pump running, the only thing I can think of that might fit a pattern is the burst of reverse used when stopping to moor up, but why would reversing specifically make oil/diesel leak? I wondered about that last point; I think there is an open plastic pipe pointing into the bilge and I seem to remember something being said maybe when we bought the boat about the shower discharging into it, but you can see the water coming out of the side when the shiower pump runs, so if that pipe has anything to do with the shower I think it can only be some sort of redundant or backup option. It's not an old boat - 2003. And in any case this phenomenon of the 'milky' water is something we've only recently noticed. Excuse my ignorance, but what does 'degreasing' a bilge consist of?
If the slick is only appearing after the bilge pump has run, it's got to be oil or diesel in the bilge, surely. Milky water in the bilge itself must be emulsified oil and water. It appearing after the RCR service implies a causal link. As I said above, some RCR blokes are fine. The ones who did mine had three months experience on boats and one week's training. One of them was training a novice. My boat has a cruiser stern and there is always water in the bilge, and however much I clean it, it's always contaminated with a bit of oil. On some boats it simply can't be helped. The canal seems to have survived - I can remember back when I started boating being advised to keep the bilge oily to cut down corrosion! And no drip trays under the engine. There's a bit of overreaction in some of the comments above, I think.
That pipe is probably the discharge from the PRV on the calorifier, not related unless it is running and filling your bilge. My money is on the stern gland needing attention to stop the excessive drip and RCR having dumped oil and/or fuel into your bilge and used detergent to disperse it when you were not looking. Fairly typical behaviour. Clean it all out, stop the drip and see how you go. Degreasing means cleaning it out and using a degreaser to remove the oily residue, er, like detergent! Stop worrying about fuel leaking down the rudder tube, Mike likes to get folk twitching sometimes with his correct but pessimistic ideas, bless him. It is very unlikely on a boat of that age. Have a good look next time you black.
Degreasing the bilge is just what it says, cleaning oil off the engine and everywhere else. Rather depends on your engine how mucky the bilge gets, but there's always some down there, if only excess from the stern tube greaser. With an old Lister like mine, there's always oil about. Every now and then I do my best to clean it up, but it's impossible not to have some muck in the bilge water, and almost impossible except in a hot summer, to get the whole bilge dry enough to even start.
Thanks Boater Sam and Arthur. Yes, I was wondering if a bit of washing-up-liquidy water was the way to go to get rid of remaining grease. We've spent the morning getting all the water out and into sealed containers - about 25 litres of 'orrible stuff that looks a bit like this: Now we need to find somewhere to dispose of it of course, but that's OK, I think it's all right on the boat in containers for now. Some of it is pretty black and maybe more what I'd picture engine oil looking like, but I also thought there was a distinct pinkish, diesel-y hue to some of it, and some of it seemed a bit 'frothy' when bailing out. Not sure if that pinkish hue comes across in that photo of the bucket. I hope you're right that it's been a one-off spillage of some sort courtesy of RCR, but there still seems a heck of a lot of contamination to say the bilge pump has run several times since that service (absolutely mortified to have been so slow in noticing the extent of the pollution we may have been causing.) We're going to run the engine while the hatch is off and see if anything starts leaking/dripping but I think the plan of action above is probably right - get cruising again having tightened up those nuts on the stern gland and hopefully stopped the drip. Only thing we've noticed so far is an apparent drip of water from the fuel filter (or pre-filter? - the first in line between the tank and engine, which I believe is supposed to trap water or something?) Whatever else is going on I'm pretty satisfied that the source of the problem is the bilge and not a leak direct from the fuel tank into the cut via the rudder tube or whatever.
The drip from the fuel filter is NOT WATER! its FUEL! get it fixed. Is this another RCR job gone wrong? If so get them back there is no excuse for leaving a fuel leak, ever.
The first thing inline, in my set up anyway, is a water separator. Fuel goes in and out at the top, any water in the fuel, being heavier, drops down and sits at the bottom. It ensures you don't get watermixed with diesel through to the actual fuel filter. If it's leaking from the bottom, it's probably water, though it could be diesel. If from the bottom, the washer on the drain plugs rotted. If from the top, the seal's gone and it's diesel. If it's leaking water from the top, it's full of water and the next thing will be water going into your engine instead of diesel, a big puff of steam from your exhaust pipe, a bang, a stopped engine and a couple of grand for an engine rebuild. Don't ask how I know this... There should be a drain plug at the bottom of ths separator bowl, which you should open every year or two and drain the collected water out, till it runs pink with pure diesel. If it's like mine, and the plug is unmoveable, just turn the fuel tap off and undo the nut at the top and the whole bowl come off. I don't think RCR touch these, at least they made no attempt to on mine, nor did the guy who did the previous service. But it shouldn't drip, and you really, really don't want water going into the engine.
The reason I thought it was water is that... my set up is like Arthur's, except that the thing doing this job is a replaceable filter rather than a permanent fixture, and the drip appeared to be coming from the bottom, where you're supposed to be able to let water out. Upon further investigation the leak was coming from the larger nut on top of the thing the filter screws on to, visible near the bottom of the attached pic. It was indeed weeping diesel, which was then running down the side of the filter and dripping off the bottom. A quarter turn with a spanner has now stopped it, and a bit more spanner action seems to have (pretty much) stopped the stern gland leak too. So incredibly enough I think we may have sorted it. (I say 'we' - more the missus than me to be honest, she fits in the engine room better! That's my excuse anyway.) Whether this had anything to do with RCR... I dunno, seems a very odd coincidence but I don't know if they'd have had any reason to touch that nut. Phew! Thanks all anyway.
Did they not replace your fuel filter when they did the service and is your filter not on this water separator?
Excellent news, well done! I'm still puzzled about how diesel dripped from the fuel filter is managing to reach the bilge pump. Fuel and oil leaks on an engine are supposed to end up in the separate drip tray under the engine, which is specifically NOT fitted with a bilge pump. This ought to be a BSS fail if the bilge pump is pumping that leaked fuel overboard into the cut.
Perhaps he has an agglerometer mounted outside of the engines catchall?
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