Vol. V · No. 2 Issue 23 May–June 2026 · Port Townsend, WA · Boat Haven, Shop 7 · (360) 385-6211
BH WT
The Bilge & Tankage Quarterly A Journal of Marine Wet Trades · Published by Boat Haven Wet Trades Co.
EST. 2021 ISSN 2769-3104
Features · Vol. V · No. 2

Five refits, one issue

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Each issue of The Bilge & Tankage Quarterly carries five long-form feature articles, each one a profile of a single refit completed at Shop 7 over the preceding three months. They are written, where possible, in the voice of the tradesperson who led the work, with the editor's hand kept deliberately light. They run anywhere from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred words. They are not how-to articles, exactly, but they will get you closer than a manufacturer-issued application note will.

Features · This Issue
A Schenker on a Lyra 48: Greta's freshwater refit By Lucia Brae, with a closing aside from Bram Halvorsen. The 22-foot waterline ketch Greta, hauled out for the first time in seven years, becomes self-sufficient at anchor with a Schenker Modular 30 watermaker, a re-fabricated PEX manifold, and a re-thought hot-water arrangement that does not require running the engine.
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A Type III for a Bristol Bay gillnetter By Salla Andresen. F/V Cape Fox, a 32-foot Bristol Bay-class gillnetter readied for the 2026 Naknek season, learns to keep her sewage on board: 38 gallons of cross-linked polyethylene tankage, a Raritan PHII manual head with a Y-valve cluster, and a hardened overboard discharge plug for the days she is outside the three-mile limit.
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Electric pumpout on a Hunter 36 By Salla Andresen, with the apprentice's photographs. A Hunter 36 named Lavandula — a winter live-aboard at the Boat Haven transient slips whose owner spent every Sunday cleaning out the Quimper Marina pumpout — is converted from manual Y-valve compliance to an on-board Jabsco 37202 electric pumpout pump and a deck-fitting discharge.
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M/V Wyman: a black-iron-to-aluminum tankage swap By Marcus Greve. A 1947 bridge-deck cruiser named for the wartime destroyer escort USS Wyman (DE-38) — commissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 1 September 1943 — loses 230 lb of rusted black-iron tankage and gains 38 gallons of useful capacity from a custom-fabricated 5052-H32 marine-aluminum freshwater tank.
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A Spectra Newport 400C for a charter sloop By Bram Halvorsen. A Hinckley B40 chartered through Salish Sea Yacht Charters out of Port Townsend picks up the most-asked-for upgrade of the 2026 season: a Spectra Newport 400C watermaker producing 15 GPH at 12 V draw, with a Connect-V remote-monitor head — and, with it, the schedule headache of bi-annual membrane pickling.
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The Lyra 48 ketch Greta on the Travelift sling, port side, with the watermaker membrane visible. Feature · p. 14 Greta's freshwater refit F/V Cape Fox, a Bristol Bay gillnetter, on shop blocks with after-deck removed for tankage access. Feature · p. 24 Cape Fox's Type III MSD A Hunter 36 sloop on a Travelift, viewed from astern, with the discharge through-hull marked. Feature · p. 30 Lavandula's electric pumpout An old rusted galvanized water tank lifted from a 1947 bridge-deck cruiser, set on shop blocks. Feature · p. 34 M/V Wyman: tankage A Hinckley B40 at anchor in flat water in the San Juans. Feature · p. 38 Orcas Lullaby's Spectra
Features · Selected from the Back Catalog
Vol. V No. 1 · Sigrid, a 1968 Pearson Vanguard, vacuum-head conversion (Lavac) From the previous issue: the Pearson Vanguard Sigrid trades a manual macerator head for a Lavac vacuum-head, with the holding tank kept and the pumpout re-routed through a Whale Gulper.
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Vol. IV No. 4 · F/V Kestrel, a 38-foot Pacific troller, fuel-polishing add-on A two-stage Algae-X fuel-polishing loop on a troller working out of Westport — the only fuel-side feature we have ever run in the journal, included because the polishing loop interleaves with the cooling-water system.
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Vol. IV No. 3 · S/V Quimper, a 1979 Tayana 37, freshwater PEX re-pipe The first all-PEX freshwater re-pipe we did on a cruising sailboat. The article describes how we got past the "tubing thermal-cycling on a hot engine block" problem that defeated the first attempt.
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From the Editor on Features

If you are a working tradesperson reading this journal for the first time: the feature articles are the section most worth your time. They are the section we ourselves re-read most often. They are also the section we have most often been asked to syndicate elsewhere; we have so far declined every such request, on the grounds that the value of the writing is bound up with the working relationship it documents and that it travels poorly outside that context. The features remain here, on this site, indexed and stable.

Each feature article carries a Reference block at its foot, with citations to the standards we relied on, the manufacturers we sourced from, and any prior issues of the journal that pre-discussed the methods. We also cross-reference into the Shop Drawings department for any plate-style schematic referenced in the body. If you find a citation that has rotted, please write to the editor and we will replace it in the next issue.

For booking a refit of your own, the Classifieds desk is the right entry point. For technical questions on a system you are already living with, the Letters department is open year-round.