aah yes, the ole below deck battery box with a sealed lid & pie plate access that can't be reached without uncaulking the deck plate trick
And he fell for it
Do like Chuck says and take the batteries out of the bilge away from the fuel tank and life will be better. Thats what most of us have done here. I closed up the deck plates and made that a permanent hatch on my boat. I added an armstrong hatch behind that for access to the bilge.
Strick