Boot Key Harbor
"Marathon- the Heart of the Florida Keys"

An On-Line Cruising Guide for the Florida Keys & Cuba
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Boating Safety – FIRE

I’m embarrassed to say that I almost blew myself up last week on Lisa’s 20 ft fishing boat. I’ll expose my stupidity to you in the hope that everyone will think more about this themselves and be careful. I was working on this boat with a friend of mine who’s an outboard mechanic. The fuel was fouled in the 30 gal inboard tank so we had the access cover off and trying to pump the bad fuel into containers. Now everyone knows not to use electric pumps on gasoline for obvious reasons. But I had some “special” pumps. They were fuel transfer pumps left over from one of my aircraft. My thought was that this would make the job MUCH easier. My friend was on his knees on the boat sole handling the hoses. I got out of the boat onto the dock to get something. I heard the deep throated “WHOOSH” behind me and as I turned to see the boat on fire I saw my friend’s feet going under the water. The fire was coming from the fuel tank access port and up the side of the 5 gal tank on the sole. This was right beside the house and our big boat so I didn’t want to risk everything burning. I scrambled onto the big boat to get an extinguisher. Portable fire extinguishers are really no-brainers, and we even let our six year old discharge the old ones so she’ll learn. Well, the one I grabbed seemed to be some Italian designer extinguisher! I pulled the pin and tried to squeeze but couldn’t get it to discharge! The hood was uniform all around its designer jacket and I kept fiddling with it to get it to work. Finally it discharged – right into my face! I turned it around and emptied the entire contents onto the boat and fuel tanks. Fortunately it worked. No one was hurt (my buddy did get a singed face and hands but the jump in the water was his escape from a pending explosion), and the boat didn’t suffer much damage. The “spark” was caused because we ran jumpers off the battery, and when I got off the boat my friend disconnected the pump and left the jumpers right by the fuel tank. They touched. It sparked. From now on I’m checking ALL my extinguishers to ensure they’re not too fancy, plus I’m putting an extinguisher on my dock. There was one in the little boat, but dang if I was going to jump into a burning boat with an open fuel tank to get it!

P/C Gregory Absten, AP