Deep bilge

oldbilbo

oldbilbo

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My 'every waking moment' has a deep bilge - about 80cm or so, by about 20cm wide by lots long - and it seems even more so now I've excavated about 30 years' accumulated screwdrivers, allen keys, hose-clips and lots of unmentionables. So what to do with all that murky but premium space....

Stick a couple of tubes of HDPE corrugated piping vertically, and keep spare anchor chain in there? Or a flexible water tank? What do others do? Warnings....?

....A virtual pint, with 1p off today, for the best solution! ;)
 
sarabande said:
flexible wine tank ?
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A rough 'back-of-a-fag-packet' design suggests a capacity in the region of 100 litres. Now, I've long admired the frugal French paysan who buys good local vin en vrac for his own family's consumption, and bringing home the same has in the past wrecked a couple of company cars' suspensions. Good parties, though!

So I'm warming to Sara's suggestion, but modifying it to hold a number of plastic 'cubies'. These are easier to carry and to stack, and an 'accident' with one will not hazard the integrity of the rest. Also, different flavours....

Cross-channel raids may take on a new dimension. Today seems brighter already.
 
Whilst you could fill it up with wine - I think there's more money to be made by loading it up with illegal immigrants - there's a good supply on the french coast - £500 each would be reasonable I would've thought ...
 
In that space you would have to take them in embryo form - or in installments! Although there have been cases of small orientals concealed in impossible places in vehicles.
 
fireball said:
Whilst you could fill it up with wine - I think there's more money to be made by loading it up with illegal immigrants - there's a good supply on the french coast - £500 each would be reasonable I would've thought ...
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I wonder how many I could squeeze in.... S'pose I could always do 'back loads' the other way.
 
Avocet is similar in section (but smaller and maybe a bit deeper). I've often wondered about putting the battery down there (keeping the weight low down) but have never done it for fear of taking-on water one day and flooding the battery - thereby killing-off the VHF at the moment I'd need it most! Needless to say, as I haven't moved the battery, this has never happened...

Also, the space is at the back of Avocet's long keel (the front being full of glassed-in ballast) and the boat is already quite tail-down when the family are all in the cockpit, so maybe adding weight that far aft isn't that good an idea.
 
GRP Twisters, like mine, use that spare space as a 36 gallon water tank. It has a removeable top which, adhering strictly to my guiding principle of 'never meet trouble half-way', I have never dared remove in 15 years. Just aft of it, under the engine is a small sump, where bilgewater accumulates and the bilge pump strum boxes have their noisome being.

;)
 
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parsifal said:
GRP Twisters, like mine, use that spare space as a 36 gallon water tank. It has a removeable top which, adhering strictly to my guiding principle of 'never meet trouble half-way', I have never dared remove in 15 years. Just aft of it, under the engine is a small sump, where bilgewater accumulates and the bilge pump strum boxes have their noisome being.

;)
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That seems a good idea, 'parsival'. If it is not hugely inconvenient, I'd really appreciate any further detail and perhaps some pics. After all, if one was not too enchanted with the quality of the water, one could of course utilise some decent claret, or some muscadet-sur-lie from a friendly vintner 'en vrac', as suggested earlier. I seem to recall that here are at least two such emporia within lurching distance of the new marina at Bloscon, a little haven which seem set to become the scene of some future 'adventurous parties', raids or rallies. e.g. Plymouth > Bloscon/Roscoff.....Party while awaiting crew change by ferry. Load up with local vin de table. Then Bloscon/Roscoff > Cork via Baltimore.....same thing, except Murphys. Then Cork > Plymouth via Isles of Scilly....same thing again.
 
"Never meet trouble half way". Very good!

May I suggest you're gonna have to get in there and glass some sort of supports to create ( retain) a sump underneath whatever you decide to infill with...
A water tank can be made from GRP laminated in flat sheet form on an old kitchen workshop, thus it will be removable and durable but cost wise.... Getting on to around the price of a flexible one..
100l ( less20 sump) is useful innit. In red, white or clear!

I have not got around to securing a bloody overly heavy fisherman type admiralty storm anchor vertically( sump is just over one arms length deep) but it is the perfect place..
 
Halo said:
What about a bilge pump and float valve?
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Plus a strum box and pipe leading the manual bilge pump?

Our bilge has the cross over water tank in it that the two main water tanks feed. It than has a large electric bilge pump and a float valve. There's a dwarf bulkhead that divides the engine bilge and that area has the manual bilge pump strum box, but if there was a real problem the incoming water would go over the top of the dwarf bulkhead and either pump would pump out the bilge... Usually the one is pretty dry and the other has a few cup fulls in it.

I've always used the bilge for storing anything that you want to keep cool but haven't got room in the fridge for...
 
oldbilbo said:
That seems a good idea, 'parsival'. If it is not hugely inconvenient, I'd really appreciate any further detail and perhaps some pics.
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I tried to send you a PM from this laptop, using a Three dongle I just bought, but for some reason it didn't go (neither do my outward emails!).

Anyway, it said:

'I'm not at home now but when I return I'll dig out the designer's drawings for the Twister and see if there's anything there that might help. If no good I'll make a sketch, and perhaps take a photo or two.'


Please remind me if I forget.
 
LittleSister said:
Funny how they're all like that - you can never reach the items that have fallen in.
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I carried a "grabber" in Kindred Spirit for this exact reason. It's a thing a bit like a park-keeper's litter picker, made for people in wheelchairs so they can reach objects that are high up or far away. As well as a very good grabbing claw it has a strong magnet in the tip for ferrous items. Easy to pick out anything that might have fallen in the four-foot-deep bilge aft.

Of course, having this on board guaranteed that in three years of ownership I never once dropped anything important in the bilge :)

The only thing it was ever used for on the boat was when my neighbours in Cherbourg marina lost a plastic bucket over their very high topsides. Because the handle had fallen off they couldn't latch onto it with their boathook. A loan of my grabber was received with gratitude and some bemusement.

Pete
 
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