We were in a Bocas Del Toro, Panama marina and were going out for a few days so I started filling the water tanks. After a few minutes Rey asked me if I was filling the water tanks, yup!,,,,, I looked and saw that I had the hose in the fuel tank! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! 30 gallons of fresh water in our only fuel tank.

I was suprised how easily the water was removed with absolutely no problems after starting the engine. But that's not the sludge issue.

Since the oil is lighter than water, all the water was at the bottom of the tank. I have a 2" diameter access plate on the top of the tank so I took a wooden dowel and attached a clear smaller diameter hose to it with zip ties making the tip a little longer than the dowell and cut the end on an angle. In the end it looked like something for liposuction. The other end of the hose was connected to a Water Puppy and then into a bucket. After most of the water was pumped out I noticed some sludge,,, not really sludge but more like junk that was in the fuel and sunk to the bottom. I started moving the dowel around removing the junk stuck to the bottom. You could see all nasty stuff in the now pure diesel coming out. I was able to move the dowel around scraping and removing years of junk until nothing else came out. I then used my 'Mr Filter' (aircraft fuel filter) to put the pumped diesel back in the tank.

I had a large mayonaise jar filled with all kinds of stuff. As a note,,, our tank is fiberglass.

We had to postpone leaving for only one day. We could have left the same day in the afternoon but I wanted a few beers.