RE: Floor/bilge

Eric Johnson (ej@tx3.com)
Fri, 15 Jan 1999 09:30:51 -0800


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> It seems my boat has the worst features of all the various
> designs that people
> have described. My boat has no pan, just the rough, leaky cloth
> over the skeg
> keel.

You have cloth? :) i should look into that. I've just got painted
fiberglass. I've thought of making a cedar or teak grating, but I've got a
lot of projects that will take precendence.

>It has no molded-in beams to contain the water. The water just
> sloshes where ever it wants to when we sail down the face of a
> wave or wake,
> usually running forward under the v-berth.
>
> The "opening" to this would-be bilge is a horizontal slit 1/4 inch high,
> located about 2 inches behind the CB trunk. There's no way to
> use a pump.

ok thats where our boat differ. There's NO indication of the skeg from
inside the cabin of my 1988. The cabin sole comes up like a V from the
centerline, but theres no drain below, etc. in fact I'll have to look at the
boat from the outside to convince myself there is a skeg under the cabin
sole at all...

I wonder if mine is hollow in there? I could bore out a spot behind the
cabin ladder and put a bilge pump there.

On the long list of boat projects is to put an electric bilge pump, and I
was planning on mounting it the the aftmost part of the skeg beneath the
cockpit drain. Theres a little pan there beneath the cockpit drain I'd have
to remove though.

Meanwhile, my boat stays bone dry in the summer with an AC electric fan in
the chain locker ventilating outwards (though I might try one of those
day/night fans) and an air dryer. In our wet seattle winters I'm collecting
a little water inside that i occasionally sponge out. If its deep enough for
the manual bilge pump i use it, but usually it doesn't take long with a big
car wash sponge.

I do seem to have the deck leaks mostly under control after I changed to a
sternlight that mounts flush into the vertical part of the transom, and
caulking the chain plates and their deck plates stopped a major source of
water entry too.