Boat stinks

[pugwash]

Nice old wooden boat, doesn't leak, no smell problems in the five years I've had her, but when I went aboard last weekend, after a month away, she stank of rotten eggs. I thought my wife must have been using bleach in the heads but it wasn't that: the heads are fine. I'd been using the forward bilge as a coolbox while cruising in France but there were no broken eggs, no mess at all. On the way back from Brittany, however, we'd taken a real pounding and sailed her rather hard. I found that bilgewater had worked up the inside of the hill and wetted the edge of a bunk cushion. The smells dissipated in half a day and didn't come back but I'd like to know the possible cause. If the boat had smelled of oil or Bilge-Ex I'd have understood it, but why rotten eggs? Any thoughts welcome.

 

[cliff]

rotten eggs => hydrogen sulphide

Check your battery box(es) for spillage and clean them out.
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"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity"

 

[pugwash]

Cliff -- that's a thought. My engine batteries have just got soft on me, too, and kept losing their charge over the weekend. The batteries are five years old and I just assumed they were getting past it. I never thought the two problems might be related. But why hydrogen sulphide? I've never known batteries or battery acid to smell of rotten eggs. Chemistry was never my strong point, though.

 

[capsco]

Had you just pumped you sea toilet before the smell was noticed??

 

[pugwash]

No. I'm pretty sure now the batteries got water in them. Accounts for two problems. Thanks for your thought.

 

[Guest]

Batterys give off Hydrogen when charging ...
Oxygen in air ....
Medium is Suplhuric acid dilute ...

You have the components ....... now we have to find the mechanism to mix them !

 

[chubby]

Perhaps not relevant to your problem with the batteries but for years our long keel boat had a "boaty smell" of diesel, mud, seaweed etc. When we changed the engine the deep bilge had 25 years of crud. We drilled a hole in the bottom, put in a brass plug and when ashore we can take out the plug and really clean out the bilge wuth a cocktail of detergents, jizzer, bilgex, you name it, guess what: no smell, only thoing is, if anyone looses the plug or doesn`t put it back before relaunching !!!!!