[C320-list] We nearly sank....

[Dennis Cookson]

Hi Graeme,

A salutary tale - well done for responding quickly and identifying the source of the leak.  Must confess I haven’t tested my manual bilge pump either…..will remedy that on the next visit. And have a look under the basin. I do turn off those seacocks every time I leave the boat though, plus the raw water intake and the one under the galley sink.

Dennis
#577  “Catalina"



> On 12 Jun 2021, at 22:18, Graeme Clark <cg at skyflyer.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> ... well, not quite but it could have been
> 
> Long story shorter... at anchor for a while and went below to light gas stove.  I then noticed the light indicating the bilge pump running, but it didn’t stop.  I pulled up the bilge cover to find the water almost up to the cabin sole.
> 
> Shut off all the seacocks  checked sterngland. Nothing obvious. I was fairly sure it wasnt engine related as the engine had been shut some time, but first issue was to pump out
> 
> A quick look over the stern showed a less than expected flow from the bilge outflow.  I put my hand into the bilge ( I had fitted a Rule 700gph pump in place of original Catalina fit diaphragm pump) and found a lot of debris blocking the inlet. More about this later.
> 
> I decided to “help things along” with the manual bilge pump. That was a bad idea for two reasons. Firstly when the bilge pump handle is down it cuts off the outlet for the electric pump.  Secondly - in my specific case, it simply didn’t work.  I hate to confess this but I don’t think I have ever tested my manual bilge pump! I guess somewhere a diaphragm or hose is split.  So we let the electric pump do the work.
> 
> Because of the way the bilge is shaped, spreading wider as it rises, the volume of water when up to the cabin sole is quite significant! It took a LONG time before we were sure that the pump was reducing the level (bearing in mind that at this point we still hadn’t identified the leak so weren’t sure it wasn’t still coming in)
> 
> And I kept pulling out crud from the pump inlet. I couldn’t understand where this was coming from as our bilge had been spotless at the start of the season.  Then I realised.  The bilge is contiguous with the area beneath the settees. As the boat rolled at anchor the water was sloshing from side to side and all the old bits of stuff I had dropped whilst wiring up stuff around the batteries or near the electrical panel was being washed out. Off cuts of cable ties, an old rubber glove (which really did a great job of blocking the pump!), a couple of leaves(!), bits of electrical tape and so on!
> 
> Eventually we could see that the pump was winning the battle. By this time I had started the engine to ensure the battery wasn’t depleted by continuous running of the pump and with a back up plan to adapt the raw water intake to extract bilge water if the electric pump wasn’t adequate.
> 
> With an empty bilge it was time to find the leak.  Again a long story shorter we eventually discovered that the hose had pulled off the heads basin outflow.  I guess this happened at some point during my spring refit when I was replacing the heads waste sanitation hose.
> 
> But because it hadn’t dropped very far below the bottom of the basin, it only leaked when the boat was heeled to starboard, putting the hose end below the water line!  Immediately before we anchored we’d been slightly over canvassed on a port tack for about 15 minutes and I guess during this time the water had poured into the boat,
> 
> At anchor it was “pulsing” out the end of the hose every time we rolled!
> 
> It is interesting that while it is considered good practice to fit double hose clips whenever the hose attaches to a seacock nobody cares much about the other end of that hose? With just one clip under the basin, the danger was the same as if there had been a single clip on the seacock!
> 
> With all that water sloshing from side to side, I now have what I suspect is the cleanest bilge in the fleet! 
> 
> Lessons learned:
> 
> 1) keep your bilges clean - not just to the normal pump switch level but right up to floor level. Tidy up all dropped waste below settees, sink, etc.
> 2) check functioning of manual bilge pump
> 3) check all hose clips, and hose fastness, even those that you haven’t touched, on a regular basis 
> 4)consider fitting double clips at BOTH ends of hoses that exit below the water line
> 5) consider bilge high level alarm
> 
> It doesn’t take much thinking to come up with variations of this scenario where the problem might not have been spotted and the boat sinking after everyone onboard had left!
> 
> Take care folks!
> 
> Graeme
> #366
> 1996
> “Jaskar”
> Poole, England
> 
> Sent from my iPad