jamie N
Well-Known Member
After I launched a month or so back, I took Stakkr up to a mooring that had been loaned to me in Cromarty Firth, whilst the moorings in Fortrose were unavailable due to maintenance. Everything had been fine, and I'd enjoyed a couple of cracking sails up and down to Invergordon. The day that I could go onto the mooring in Fortrose was Thursday last, thus on Wednesday I went up to the boat, ran the engine up to put a final charge onto the batteries, and faffed about making sure that all was well, and restowed some stuff in the lockers just to be sure that all would be well.
Thursday morning and out to the boat, which seemed a bit lower in the water than I remembered, and there was a whine from the automatic bilge pump. Onboard, the water was at the level of the cabin sole, the pump was indeed running, but the water wasn't going anywhere?
WTF?
First thing that I did was to stop the pump by standing a bottle of water on the float switch. Next thing was to start the engine, which has a bilge pump built into the cooling water pump. Now it's all getting better as I could see the water level going down, but why wasn't the automatic bilge pump draining away; easy, during my restowing of stuff, I'd restowed so well that it had closed the 1/4 turn valve of the bilge drain stopcock/valve. No wonder that the water wasn't being drained; one issue solved, but where was the water coming in from? I went back into the cabin, where there was still a similar amount of water sloshing around, and obviously not draining, WTF again!?
I removed the steps so that I could look into the engine area, where there was a good spray of water going everywhere and anywhere, and it was obvious that the engine bilge drain pipe had come loose from the water pump, OK, stop the engine and refit the pipe, then restart the engine and pump out, as well as remove the bottle of water and let the auto bilge pump do its stuff as well. This is now good, and all things are working, so I set sail, just catching the tide to get down to Fortrose; but where did the water come from?
Simple in the end; the engine water inlet valve had been left open; as I stated, the water pump has 2 impellers in it, one for pumping cooling water, the other for pumping water out of the bilge. The 2 chambers are separate but joined by a small hole between them which allows water into the bilge pump side of the pump, so that it's never running dry. This is where the potential for a calamity is, as water is essentially syphoned through the pump, and down through the bilge water 'pick-up' line.
As an 'aide memoir', I've made a kind of 'REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT' tally that'll remove this risk.
Anyway, the sail down was fantastic as I was escorted for a couple of hours by a pod of Dolphins, the sun shone etc.etc.. I'm reminded that disasters are rarely down to one single thing going awry.
Perhaps this should be in a confessional....!
Thursday morning and out to the boat, which seemed a bit lower in the water than I remembered, and there was a whine from the automatic bilge pump. Onboard, the water was at the level of the cabin sole, the pump was indeed running, but the water wasn't going anywhere?
WTF?
First thing that I did was to stop the pump by standing a bottle of water on the float switch. Next thing was to start the engine, which has a bilge pump built into the cooling water pump. Now it's all getting better as I could see the water level going down, but why wasn't the automatic bilge pump draining away; easy, during my restowing of stuff, I'd restowed so well that it had closed the 1/4 turn valve of the bilge drain stopcock/valve. No wonder that the water wasn't being drained; one issue solved, but where was the water coming in from? I went back into the cabin, where there was still a similar amount of water sloshing around, and obviously not draining, WTF again!?
I removed the steps so that I could look into the engine area, where there was a good spray of water going everywhere and anywhere, and it was obvious that the engine bilge drain pipe had come loose from the water pump, OK, stop the engine and refit the pipe, then restart the engine and pump out, as well as remove the bottle of water and let the auto bilge pump do its stuff as well. This is now good, and all things are working, so I set sail, just catching the tide to get down to Fortrose; but where did the water come from?
Simple in the end; the engine water inlet valve had been left open; as I stated, the water pump has 2 impellers in it, one for pumping cooling water, the other for pumping water out of the bilge. The 2 chambers are separate but joined by a small hole between them which allows water into the bilge pump side of the pump, so that it's never running dry. This is where the potential for a calamity is, as water is essentially syphoned through the pump, and down through the bilge water 'pick-up' line.
As an 'aide memoir', I've made a kind of 'REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT' tally that'll remove this risk.
Anyway, the sail down was fantastic as I was escorted for a couple of hours by a pod of Dolphins, the sun shone etc.etc.. I'm reminded that disasters are rarely down to one single thing going awry.
Perhaps this should be in a confessional....!
