Irrational fear of sinking?

[Coaster]

I think that fitting an electric bilge pump is a sign of irrational fear of sinking; all it will do is flatten the battery before you sink.

Not if your boat is connected to a mains electricity supply and a sufficiently sophisticated device is charging the batteries connected to the automatic bilge pump(s).

Then you worry instead about stray currents, electrolytic action and failure of hull fittings...

 

[photodog]

Never give sinking a second thought.

Yeah, thats what captain smith said as well....

And the skipper of the Hans Hedtoft....

 

[Poignard]

Never give sinking a second thought.

I sink you should.

 

[Kukri]

Not if your boat is connected to a mains electricity supply and a sufficiently sophisticated device is charging the batteries connected to the automatic bilge pump(s).

Then you worry instead about stray currents, electrolytic action and failure of hull fittings...

That takes me back... to a big floating dock... built to dock battleships in WW2 , that we had just bought a few years earlier...rat got in junction box one night.... rat fried... next morning our dock was on the bottom - luckily without a ship in it!

There were - we counted them - 724 cement boxes in the bottom tanks, but a certain Classification Society saw nothing wrong with her! !

 

[jerrytug]

No but I'm paranoid about the boat falling over when she's on the hard,I check the belt-and-braces scaffolding cradle daily.It's always ok,so I worry about the heavy Vancouver next door blowing over and knocking my boat over (Vancouver propped up with sticks), Also hate working on side decks on land,guaranteed broken bones if you slip off. Sinking,just keep the cocks closed and don't sail into shipping containers when asleep simples! Jerry at 0300 waiting for the crash.

 

[Sans Bateau]

I sink you should.

Galadriel is an Etap!

 

[blackbeard]

Just to add that our club once had a boat which took on a lot of water over a long period, would have sunk if someone hadn't noticed it was floating a bit low. Cause was a pinhole leak in the engine cooling system and the engine cooling water seacock left open.

And on electric auto bilge pumps: generally will not shift water fast enough to deal with a disintegrated skin fitting, and I take the point about flat batteries; on the other hand, a typical pump is claimed to shift about 500 gallons (ie about 2 tons)/hour using about 2.5 amps, if your battery has about 100 amp-hours that's a lot of water.

And, yes, I'm paranoid about sea cocks and even more paranoid about gas.

 

[wiggy]

I know of a flotilla engineer who put the fresh water hose in the filler, turned it on and got distracted, after an extended lunch (about 8pm) he came back to find the boat sat on the mud with the Mediterranean about 6 inches from flooding over the side deck.
Someone had taken the inspection hatch off the fresh water tank!
Dried out and back on flotilla the next week, thank goodness for shallow waters.

 

[viejo gringo]

paranoid you bet i am

yep, i worry sick all the time, sea cocks are probably the main worry even though theyre checked off daily, followed by gas, which is a bit stupid as i only have a little bottle for the barbie, followed by anchor dragging, rigging failure engine failure engine room fire, wiring shorts, i think it,ll be worse when i get out of the boatyard and afloat !!!!!!!!

 

[Koeketiene]

Does anyone else suffer from an irrational fear of their boat sinking when it's unattended? I go round closing seacocks that haven't spilled a drop but I still fear them spontaneously failing. I find it hard to have more than a week go by without a visit - just to check. We fitted an auto bilge pump with an alarm loud enough for half the marina to hear. I've even taken to giving the stern gland greaser a couple of turns before we leave "just in case".

Am I mad?

To ask the question is to answer it

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Does anyone else suffer from an irrational fear of their boat sinking when it's unattended? I go round closing seacocks that haven't spilled a drop but I still fear them spontaneously failing. I find it hard to have more than a week go by without a visit - just to check. We fitted an auto bilge pump with an alarm loud enough for half the marina to hear. I've even taken to giving the stern gland greaser a couple of turns before we leave "just in case".

Am I mad?

Maybe not mad, but stressed out. If you do all that then your boat is probably safe. It's actually a sign of a stressed human if you take events with insignificant probabilities and worry about them happening. Maybe you need cognitive therapy to get over it. You may enjoy your boating more.

The alarm is likely to increase the risk of the boat sinking. If it goes off accidentally when you are on board then it may not do your constitution any good. I would be worried about that, accidental loud noise and getting a huge fright, just as you are berthing. You may push the throttle forward accidentally and ram another boat, sinking both yours and theirs.

 

[ribrage]

Does anyone else suffer from an irrational fear of their boat sinking when it's unattended? I go round closing seacocks that haven't spilled a drop but I still fear them spontaneously failing. I find it hard to have more than a week go by without a visit - just to check. We fitted an auto bilge pump with an alarm loud enough for half the marina to hear. I've even taken to giving the stern gland greaser a couple of turns before we leave "just in case".

Am I mad?

Maybe not so irrational after all !

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=313945

 

[CliveG]

Got a text from the boat over night to say the aft bilge pump had run
I have been checking her status on and off all day.
It has not run since so it must be that small deck leak the I can't seem to find.

 

[Rivers & creeks]

The alarm is likely to increase the risk of the boat sinking. If it goes off accidentally when you are on board then it may not do your constitution any good. I would be worried about that, accidental loud noise and getting a huge fright, just as you are berthing. You may push the throttle forward accidentally and ram another boat, sinking both yours and theirs.

Something else for me to worry about

I think the alarm is very important, we have a huge bilge under the engine and a high bilge alarm would alert us to a large water ingress a long time before it spilled over to the saloon bilge. The float is set at about 50 litres high so even a speeded up gland drip would take a day or so of motoring to do that!

 

[johnga]

Does anyone else suffer from an irrational fear of their boat sinking when it's unattended? I go round closing seacocks that haven't spilled a drop but I still fear them spontaneously failing. I find it hard to have more than a week go by without a visit - just to check. We fitted an auto bilge pump with an alarm loud enough for half the marina to hear. I've even taken to giving the stern gland greaser a couple of turns before we leave "just in case".

Am I mad?

I used to own a 25' gunter-rigged sloop 'Cormorant' (oddly, all bar one boat I have ever owned was named after a bird!). It was previously owned by the (then) well known pianist and quiz show host Joseph Cooper (of 'Face the Music' with Joyce Grenfell, Richard Baker, Robin Ray and David Attenborough).

I bought her in 1977 and spent 2 thoroughly enjoyable years restoring what was a very sad and neglected boat. New timber decks, renovated solid brass portholes that had been painted in aluminium returned to their former brilliant glory, 6 coats varnish to her stripped-back superstructure and 2 coats primer, 3 coats undercoat and 3 coats gloss to her hull. Newly uphostered and painted inside with 2 brass gimballed oil lamps and a paired brass clock and barometer. I even hand-carved from a solid wooden block of oak an art deco styled acanthus-leaved adorned tiller. Even though I say it myself she looked stunning.

I sailed her from Newhaven to Brighton Marina, just about opened for business at that time. Joseph Cooper was contacted through the BBC and came to view with his wife and was very suitably impressed. The boat was featured in his book 'Facing the Music' with a whole chapter asigned to her.

Anyway, I finally kept her on a very peaceful swinging mooring off Old Bosham near Chichester.

I happened to leave her for about a month,on one occasion, and returned to my absolute horror to find only half the boat visible above the water line with just a few inches of remaining freeboard. Her bilge was swamped and she'd taken in water to completely cover her Stuart Turner engine and all the soft furnishing. I managed to get her towed to shore and lifted out before she completely disappeared underwater.

The local boat-builder gave her the once over. The culprit was simply a lost rivet combined with some bilge dirt (my paint flakes from the restoration) wedging between two clinker planks forcing them apart enough to do the damage.

It was all taken care of, adding to a rather costly engine removal and overhaul. She dried out over a few weeks and I sold her. It was GRP for me from that moment onward, despite the romantic appeal of all things marine, timber and brass.

 

[reginaldon]

The only time in the past seven years my boat figured in my dreams (nightmares), I dreamed that she came of her moorings and landed up in the railway arches, that night that is what happened! - a long story.

 

[Poignard]

The only time in the past seven years my boat figured in my dreams (nightmares), I dreamed that she came of her moorings and landed up in the railway arches, that night that is what happened! - a long story.

You don't want that to happen. There's a dosser called Chrusty who lives under the arches. He'll have all the fittings stripped off and flogged before you know it

 

[reginaldon]

You don't want that to happen. There's a dosser called Chrusty who lives under the arches. He'll have all the fittings stripped off and flogged before you know it

Yeh, but he's in N Devon. I bailed her and got her towed back when the tide came in that same morning, when others lifted in, I lifted out and spent the next 12 months repairing her, when free -4 hrs per week.

 

[oldharry]

Nothing irrational about ensuring the boat is secure and safe as you can make it. Its called seamanship.

And yes, I check mine on its swinging mooring at least twice a week - even if the weather has been perfect! Its a nice walk too!

When I was a member of the 'Birmingham Navy', with a four hour drive over the Welsh mountains to the boat, it was a different matter. But in those days people were much more observant. I was aboard one day, and had gone ashore - within 20 minutes somebody noticed the boat was open and rang my home.

Those were the days!

 

[Seajet]

You can't cover every eventuality; a very nice vintage wooden boat moored at my club was hit by lightning and sunk by a plank being blown out, and she had one of the shortest, wooden masts around, surounded by taller alloy ones !

She was quickly recovered and put back into top condition.

My boat has no skin fittings at all, the galley sink is emptied by a bilge pump, the loo is chemical ( top tip, no worries about fitting a holding tank, and it works even when the boat is dried out ) and the engine is in a well when in use, I did fit seacocks on the bilge pump outlets - they're well above the waterline but I thought they might be submerged if the stern sections got flooded somehow.

Another boat I owned had 7 seacocks, there was usually one failed at any given time; once being young and daft I went over the side in snorkelling gear and plugged a seacock with a wooden taper while a mate changed the valve, we were in deep water in Fowey at the time and had a 'Plan B' that if it went wrong we'd drive her flat out onto the shore !

Gives me sweaty palms just thinking about it now...