Water in the engine compartment / Chaparral 280 Signature (New to boating!)

[davidwalesuk]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this matter. I've recently bought a 1996 Chaparral 280 Signature (9 meter). Generally the boat seems in very nice condition, however there is something which is concerning me a little and that is water in the engine compartment. If you lift the floor covers up you can see most days 4-5 litres of water sitting on the bottom before switching the pump on (the boat is constantly on the lake), I've even lifted up the base on the floor where the inside dinner table connects to and I can see some water even by there, is this normal? I've been told this is all the water from the engine bay (when the boat isn't level the water moves up down the length of the boat?). There has been water leaking in from one of the main side windows, would all the water drain into the engine compartment?

Any feed back would be much appreciated!

Kind Regards,

Dave.

 

[wipe_out]

Very often you have a little water in there.. Could be from rain or when you have been washing the boat.. Really what you don't want is for it to be increasing for no reason.. If you are worried get in there with a sponge and bucket and mop up and much as you can (if oily don't throw it overboard).. Then keep an eye on it for a few days/weeks and see if it comes back without any explanation (like rain or washing).. If it stays pretty dry then you are fine, if not then you may have water coming in somewhere..

 

[prv]

The space in the bottom of the hull is called the bilge, and it is fairly normal to have a bit of water there. Ideally it should be possible to make a modern boat completely leak-free and have a dry bilge, but this is commonly not the case especially on anything more than a few years old. Assuming it's not increasing rapidly you can either put up with it or try to find and fix all the leaks, but it's not something to panic about.

Pete

 

[Tranona]

The water can be coming in either from fittings that go through the bottom of the boat (would be salt water if you are in the sea) or from leeks above water such as the leaking window you suggested. It would find its way into the bilge and collect a the lowest point which is whee the pump should be. Suggest you pump it out and mop dry then see if more comes in. You may be able to trace the source by sprinkling talcum powder under likely sources. Leaks can be really hard to find so you just have to methodically look at all possible sources and then deal with them.

 

[davidwalesuk]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply! pretty much what I've been told by other folks on the lake today, hopefully fixing the window properly will sort the job, might be a good idea to go around and retighten all the hand rails ect ext.

Thanks again.

Dave.

 

[rafiki_]

One way of finding out where water is coming in is to use talcolm powder. Sprinkle some the the area under question, and this will show if any water is present. As others said, best thing to do is to sponge or siphon the water out, then monitor the rate of return.

 

[Andy Bav]

I am not sure if it is a recent change but one thing thay struck me about your question is that you have to manually switch on the pump.

We had a similar ingress problem on our cuddy which was located to a cross threaded drain outlet, but when we left the boat we always isolated the battery which killed all circuits with the exception of the automatic bilge pump.

As I say this may be a recent introduction and it sounds like you may not have an auto pump - or if you do it may be killed if you isolate the battery.

Prevention is better than cure, but my concern would be if the boat was left for a long time, the water ingress could turn an annoyance into a problem...