Smell on boat

[soop]

I had a really bad holding tank smell about a year ago - before I purchased it the older owner let the holding tank bulge and as a result I had to replace the lines and take the holding tank out...although the holding tank smell is gone - I have another VERY acute smell arising in my boat. I have been told it might be the vinyl giving off the smell or something else. It doesnt smell like crap, but I have literally sprayed down every inch of the boat and tried ozone generators and chemical and everything.
Does anyone else have this problem or know of any other solution that I could use?

[seapuppy]

soop....without knowing what is off gassing...I have no way of telling you what it could be...it could be fiberglass resin....could be vinyl....could be mold.....could be gas wheeping in....cood be alot of things...sorry but there is no way to suggest what it could be...


SP :|

[shrew]

Is the smell chemical or acidic, like batteries cooking? moldy, wet or rotten? more like toilet chemicals? that funky bilge smell? I would think that offgassing, like the new car smell or new carpets would be a bunch different than funky bilge, for example. I'm just trying to get in the ballpark.

Have you changed any cleaning products or chemicals lately? Maybe it's something your using on the boat itself.

I'd put a bunch of fresh water in all the bilges and pour a little bilge cleaner (orange is awesome) in there and take the boat out for a nice bumpy ride, then bilge it all out and hand pump the rest until it's squeeky. I might consider doing it a second with just water as a rinse. Then shampoo all the carpets, including under the mattresses, consider doing the carpetted bulkheads and headliner if it's coth and see if that helps any. Also, run some fresh water through the shower sump, just in case it's not getting funky in the line down there. It might take a little time, but it won't cost much.

Maybe it is something ON the boat. With fall coming, I'd remove absolutely everything and do a thorough cleaning and see if it's still there.

[ewinne]

I think the biggest "usual suspects" are things like offgassing batteries and head-related issues (vent, hoses, a gasket leak, etc)

Ed

[soop]

Sorry I wasnt being overly detailed.
I can tell you that it is not bilge smell or battery acids...
The smell is almost a bad deodarent smell. Again I know I am being very foggy here. Was hoping someone else had the same smell coming from say the vinyl or something.
thanks again.

[Tommyfmu]

Where are you smelling the odor; cabin fore and/or aft, cockpit ? ? If it's cabin, one thought comes to mind that I dealt with recently which possibly is water sitting under your floorboard in the cabin. Recently I found that after heavy usage of the head one weekend, somewhere a seawater pump leak was allowing seawater to get under the floorboard in the cabin, and the fore bilge wasn't low enough to get the water out, so it sat there resulting in sopping carpet in the cabin. After shop vacuuming up the carpet for two weeks in a row, I realized a LOT of water was just sitting under the floor board that wasn't going away, so I shopvac'd out all the water through the bulkhead, accessed from the small triangle hatch under the cabin table. It took about an hour because the drain holes were so small to suck the water through, and there must have been 20 gallons. That did the trick and it's been dry since.