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As others have stated. I just cannot imagine where a pint a quart even a gallon of Chlorine or Peroxide diluted with 140 gallons of water is going to be a problem.

Not about to argue good or bad relating to the enviroment (I've done my share of bad stuff), but here's something to consider. You may already know this trick. If a manatee is about 150 feet off your boat and you want it to come near, all you have to do is pour a bottle of fresh water beside your hull. The manatee will then come next to your boat where the fresh water is and many times allow you to pet it.

If it can detect a pint of fresh water from 150 feet away, what are water creatures aware of that we cannot imagine. It's your choice (and the Navy's, and the cruise lines, and the . . . ). Do not mean to hijack the thread, but need to consider what we are dumping, no matter how small.

Billy wrote:

As others have stated. I just cannot imagine where a pint a quart even a gallon of Chlorine or Peroxide diluted with 140 gallons of water is going to be a problem.

Not about to argue good or bad relating to the environment (I've done my share of bad stuff), but here's something to consider. You may already know this trick. If a manatee is about 150 feet off your boat and you want it to come near, all you have to do is pour a bottle of fresh water beside your hull. The manatee will then come next to your boat where the fresh water is and many times allow you to pet it.

If it can detect a pint of fresh water from 150 feet away, what are water creatures aware of that we cannot imagine. It's your choice (and the Navy's, and the cruise lines, and the . . . ). Do not mean to hijack the thread, but need to consider what we are dumping, no matter how small.

I agree Billy and at times its a tuff call. I live PT in Mexico and they are leaps and bounds ahead of 80% of the other 3rd world countries . Yet if we followed as they are doing everyday, we ( herein the USA and the other G8's) we would all be in jail.

Yes someone has to start it all and I guess by and large its going to be the G 8's . South of our borders the entire rest of this Continent still smolders garbage as a way to reduce volume before burial, and the list goes on and on.

Just to give everybody an update... in the absence of a more environmently friendly solution, I took the boat out last week and put a quart of regular clorox bleach in the ballast tank and left it in for 2 days. It took care of the problem completely, no more smell. For maintainance I am going to try using 2 oz. in the tank per trip as per my earlier calculations and see if it keeps the smell away and if it does I will try reducing it to the smallest possible quantity.

Kelly

I don't think you need to worry about that quart of chlorine in the lake. By the time you've let it sit in your tank for 2 days there may well have been little or no actual free chlorine left. As Phillip has so well stated it, as the chlorine does its' work it is subject to chemical reactions which bind the chlorine particles into other compounds, rendering them non-toxic and ineffective, though sometimes smelly.

If you are in salt water there is even less reason to worry - "salt" is Sodium Chloride, and the great majority of water on the planet already has lots of it

- Andy

I lived in Florida for 7 years on the inner coastal and never heard of the manatee trick. Thanks, I will keep it in mind for next years Keyes vacation.

Chlorine is produced by the electrolysis of salt water.....and where is strong clean salt water found in abundance, at absolutely no cost???

When electricity is passed through 2NaCl (salt) and 2H20 (water), the atoms dissociate into Cl2 (chlorine) + 2NaOH (sodium Hydroxide) + H2 (Hydrogen).

Cl2 (Chlorine) is isolated in its gaseous form, and used to create other chlorine compounds used for sanitizing, bleaching and production of plastics and related products.

Chlorine was first discovered in the sixteenth century, and today is one of the most produced chemicals in the US, and the world, finding its way into a multitude of products. Chlorine is so deeply inter-twined into industry that finding alternatives would indeed change our daily lives.

If Chlorine never existed, then half of you on this board would no longer be alive, and the remaining half would be fast approaching your use-by date.

In Shakespeares day, girls had babies at the beginning of puberty, because life expectancy was seldon past the 20 years, that's how crippling diseases were on the human race, as most disease were transported, then introduced by water to the gut of warm blooded mammals, resulting in short life spans. To break the cycle of diseases, you have to remove diseases from the water.

Clean water saves lives, and if you don't like chlorine, then go draw your drinking water from the outflow of your sewer. And i am serious.

Todays current killer disease in our societies is e-coli. I will gurantee USA has problems with it in its food chain. If you don't have sanitizers, believe me, you are going to suffer and probably die from it.

Chlorine is one of the most important elements that effect your longlivity and quality of life.

Use it as per instructions, and have a happy life.

I apologise if I sound 'antagonised'. I'm not...just trying to relate facts as I know them.

Cheers
Phillip