Salutary experience..

[Fergus]

Coming in to Chb harbour SWMBO goes below to wake the crew and in a panicky kind of voice (OK, a scream) says the boat's full of water! 8" above the cabin sole in less than 30 mins. Lower sails, start engine and start bailing like mad. Call up marina requesting a tow and a pump and they send up the whole 9 yards - divers, rescue helicopter, fire brigade etc. As you can imagine all this is being followed by the marina population listening in on VHF and spectators were lining up as we were towed in! Boat now dry as a bone!

Hauled out, no holes or visible cause. Found engine rubber mounts not connected to anything - engine just resting on them so had that replaced. Back in the water - engine now running OK (would not do anything other than tickover - why?). Eventually trace the most likely culprit to be a disconnected bilge pump under the after berth - it's been like that for ages and never let any water in despite quite a bit of heavy weather sailing, racing etc. Can only surmise that the very specific conditions (close reach starboard tack) caused the outlet pipe to start siphoning..

Lesson learned - never leave any pipes open (sounds obvious but even the pernickety surveyor just said "bilge pump doesn't appear to be connected"). Non-return valves should have been fitted but that's no excuse!

I have nothing but praise for the Chbg staff - efficient, professional and friendly, especially late on a Friday evening! They only charged for the cranage as well.

Apart from that had a great trip!

 

[Danny Jo]

[ QUOTE ]
Hauled out, no holes or visible cause. Found engine rubber mounts not connected to anything - engine just resting on them so had that replaced.

[/ QUOTE ] Putting these two statements together suggests another possible cause. A couple of questions: What sort of shaft seal do you have? And was it bumpy coming over the bar?

(Deep sea seal, bumpy ride, engine moves, shaft distorts seal?)

 

[Fergus]

I have a saildrive and the motion wasn't particularly bumpy - certainly less so than on other occasions when the boat remained dry as a bone..

 

[KenMcCulloch]

I remeber when I did Sea Survival a good few years ago one piece of advice was not to even think about abandoning ship until the water in the cabin 'is up to a gentleman's privates'. Especially in a modern yacht with little or no actual bilge to fill with water crews probably need to be trained to not panic just because there's a few inches of water down there. It's ceratinly cause for concern but doesn't necessarily mean the boat is in any imminent danger.

I would say the salutary lessons are (1) Maintenance can save your lives (2) If you find a few inches of water in the boat without having hit anything try pumping and checking skin fittings before calling for help.

 

[Fergus]

Agree with 1 but with so much water in 30 mins and baling having (initially) no appreciable effect I thought it prudent to ask for a pump!

 

[wotayottie]

I doubt the bilge pump idea - every one I've ever come across has its outlet above the water line, so how would water get in through a bilge pump?

How about your loo? I ask this because I have found ours back siphoning and filling the bowl to overflowing when the little lever on top was left in the wrong position. There are other possibilities, but you do need to find out how the water got in for certain, not just guessing. The next time the marina might not be so near.

 

[bobgoode]

Many years ago, whilst on my very first sail with my very first yacht, I found water over the floor boards. When I pulled on the bilge pump it fell to pieces. I quickly learned to bail with a bowl! The cause was water syphoning over the toilet bowl. Yes I had shut off the blake type seacock but some ars**ole had assembled it out of alignment so closed was in fact open.

 

[raquet]

I can't find fault with your decision. You were only asking for assistance from the local marina staff and not from emergency services. And you were expecting to be charged for it – even if they, generously, didn’t charge for everything. Why prolong your stress when there is assistance readily to hand?

 

[Fergus]

Definitely not the loo - the heads were drier than the main cabin as the water had not yet risen above the heads door sill. The bilge exit is normally at the water line but with the 7kn sailing it's possible that you could get reverse water pressure from the stern wave (that's my theory anyway!). SD seal also dry..

 

[DaveS]

[ QUOTE ]
baling having (initially) no appreciable effect

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is a point well worth drawing out. Many years ago with my first boat, while hard on the wind we found we were taking water. After baling for some time we eventually abandoned the race (in which we were - most unusually - favourably placed) after the water reached a foot above the cabin sole. After regaining an even keel we in fact took on no more water - but that only became clear when analysing the events afterwards. At the time, much energetic baling ("the frightened man with a bucket" and all that) did not seem to produce any noticeable gain for many, many minutes. This was a small boat - 20 foot; a larger hull would have taken far, far longer to show that we were in fact winning.

We learned quite a lot from that incident...