Biggles Wader
Well-Known Member
When I said ten days I meant it would take until 1st April to achieve what was required
YM April - Question of Seamanship
- Thread starter dunedin
- Start date
When I said ten days I meant it would take until 1st April to achieve what was required
alant
Well-Known Member
Best the battery for any emergency calls, is at a high level in the yacht, much like fishing boats, to prevent loss of power when flooding.
steve350
Well-Known Member
Solution: only venture offshore in a suitable vessel. Water ingress due to keel issues wouldn't occur if one were to sail a Nicholson 32 for example. The trophy cabinet would remain empty but the sailors would survive their passage.
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Zzzzz. ( both for the post and the boat.)
westhinder
Well-Known Member
Not so sure about that.
My boat has a permanently plumbed in pipe down the bilge with a similar strainer as the bilge pump, T-d into the seawater intake for the engine. I also use it to flush the system with fresh water and then antifreeze when winterising the engine. I can tell you a hose running at full flow into the bucket does not keep up with the intake of the engine.
I have not compared it with the flow rate of the electrical bilge pump, but I doubt that will shift substantially more. If I had a serious leak, using the engine as an extra emergency pump might make the difference. It would also keep the batteries alive to feed the bilge pump, VHF and other systems.
lw395
Well-Known Member
And the vibration from revving the engine might help finish off the structure?
Prasutigus
Well-Known Member
Greetings,
yes, not much flow, but everything is relative and it might possibly tip the balance.
Bilge ejection by main engine S/W pump is SOP on things like tugs, trawlers, coasters etc, and I've had a Lloyds surveyor check the valve opened freely by hand. ( It didn't
)The flow rate is also small if you are 2000 tons, relative to the amount of water to shift.
(A risk of sucking up debris from the bilges into the pump, though.)
. On reflection,a bilge ejection valve, and S/W strum box/ filter arrangement should be original fitting on any sizeable seagoing sailing vessel with an engine.
Why not?
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
If they'd specified a Jeaneau it may have been weeks before anyone noticed the keel had fallen off.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
About the speed of a bucket chain.
I spent a couple of hours bailing in to run the engine when the inlet sea cock jammed closed on a boat I was crewing on. It was continuous just filling the next bucket and putting it down for the next person to pass below.
MoodySabre
Well-Known Member
This reminds me to chuck some water in the bilge to make sure the automatic bilge pump is still working.
lw395
Well-Known Member
I think I'd be more concerned with minimising the forces on the keel, in order to keep it attached, and having a clear evacuation plan in the event of inversion.
I've not read the comic, so I don't know the full scenario in terms of location, crew, weather etc.
Getting help has to be a given, the moment you are fairly sure the hull is giving problems.
In reality, I expect the biggest problem is differentiating the early signs of hull failure from common hard to trace/eliminate leaks such as stanchions, thru hulls, deck fittings, engine plumbing, cockpit drains. Plenty of us have seen significant water in the bilge one way or another, and never had a structural failure. The amount of water that can get below just from wet sails and wet people can be alarming.
I've not read the comic, so I don't know the full scenario in terms of location, crew, weather etc.
Getting help has to be a given, the moment you are fairly sure the hull is giving problems.
In reality, I expect the biggest problem is differentiating the early signs of hull failure from common hard to trace/eliminate leaks such as stanchions, thru hulls, deck fittings, engine plumbing, cockpit drains. Plenty of us have seen significant water in the bilge one way or another, and never had a structural failure. The amount of water that can get below just from wet sails and wet people can be alarming.
tudorsailor
Well-Known Member
Don't forget to check the engine as a source of the water. The latest video from Britican shows them finding water in the bilge that was coming from a split in the raw water inlet pipe to the engine. If course then they discovered that having stopped the engine to stop the flow they could not start it because the water caused a problem with the starter motor........
TudorSailor
TudorSailor
Daydream believer
Well-Known Member
Obviously establishing the cause of the leak is a priority then have a plan in place.It may be something that a simple wood bung in a seacock can solve.Even a leak in the engine circulatory system can allow huge amounts of water on board.
Apart from mayday & getting ready to abandon ship, I would get the sails down. Some boats still have stability without a keel. (Rumour has it that a charter boat sailed around the south coast after the keel dropped off & no one knew). If the problem was the keel it would take the strain off the keel.
I would also make starting the engine a priority to get power into the batteries to power pumps & radio etc. If the batteries go flat the engine will not start but it will run without battery power & boats have used their own raw water pumps as a means of removing water.
There are other pumps on board ie shower pump, Heads pump (although by then that will probably be full up!!!) that crew can use. Unscrew the plug in the side so it pumps water from a lower level rather than wait for it to go over the top of the bowl.
Perhaps one might get one of the domestic batteries disconnected & up to a higher level above the water for VHF use.
Apart from mayday & getting ready to abandon ship, I would get the sails down. Some boats still have stability without a keel. (Rumour has it that a charter boat sailed around the south coast after the keel dropped off & no one knew). If the problem was the keel it would take the strain off the keel.
I would also make starting the engine a priority to get power into the batteries to power pumps & radio etc. If the batteries go flat the engine will not start but it will run without battery power & boats have used their own raw water pumps as a means of removing water.
There are other pumps on board ie shower pump, Heads pump (although by then that will probably be full up!!!) that crew can use. Unscrew the plug in the side so it pumps water from a lower level rather than wait for it to go over the top of the bowl.
Perhaps one might get one of the domestic batteries disconnected & up to a higher level above the water for VHF use.
Marmalade
Well-Known Member
We have a diverter on the shower pump with an extra long hose that will reach into the main bilge - just to give us an additional pump if needed
Triassic
Well-Known Member
Am I displaying incredible levels of ignorance by asking if it has even been attempted to try and develop some kind of inflatable bladder system that could be deployed inside a yacht to prevent her from sinking in such circumstances (hole in the hull etc etc). I know some extreme sailors have filled the bow and stern of their boats with foam before embarking on adventure so the principal must be semi achievable, but I wondered just how much buoyancy would have to be introduced into your average yacht to keep her on the surface and providing some means of shelter/life support?
DJE
Well-Known Member
Sadlers and Etaps seem to have managed it with foam-filled voids between the hull and a liner moulding.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
Assuming that by some amazing co-incidence this isn't a leak in a freshwater hose but is actually the keel about to drop off, then the foam filled bow and stern compartments might allow the boat to float slightly higher once capsized. I doubt that would provide much shelter or lifesupport in a F6 in the mid-Atlantic.
Meanwhile if it does turn out just to be a leaky hose the crew might be a bit hacked off that you've filled their cabins with foam.
alant
Well-Known Member
If it needs electric to work it, power may not be available.
prv
Well-Known Member
Only moderate levels
It’s been tried, the Pardeys devoted a chapter to it in one of their books and a couple of systems were available commercially. Neither made many sales; it’s a reasonably expensive and time-consuming project to do, and few people really believe they’re in that much danger of sinking as to bother actually doing it, however good they think the idea is on paper.
The usual arrangement was to lay out the deflated bladders under bunk cushions, where they blocked access into stowage lids beneath, with hoses running to a gas bottle stowed somewhere only mildly inconvenient. The bags had to be strapped down to something strong enough to support a couple of hundred kilos of lift, and some thought given to the risk of puncturing them on nearby cabin fittings; part of the reason for the under-bunk position was that the cushion could act as protection for the inflated bags.
Pete
Triassic
Well-Known Member
What about if they were actually built into bunk cushions? Forepeak, aft cabin if you have one, and pilot berths would provide quite a volume of potential floatation space and generally these are located under decks rather than cabin tops so the inflated bag would be trapped between bunks and ceiling. Obviously if as lpdsn suggests the boat is going to be capsized then I'm assuming that great big bit of metal you guys suspend beneath the boat will have gone, in which case even less buoyancy will be needed.
I just remember watching a video on Youtube a while back featuring a couple abandoning their sinking yacht in perfectly calm seas simply because a rudder failure had left a hole under the stern. It just seemed so tragic that so much was lost due to a reasonably predictable failure, i.e. there's lots of rubbish in the oceans these days and rudders seem particularly vulnerable. Oh well, not sorry I asked.
I just remember watching a video on Youtube a while back featuring a couple abandoning their sinking yacht in perfectly calm seas simply because a rudder failure had left a hole under the stern. It just seemed so tragic that so much was lost due to a reasonably predictable failure, i.e. there's lots of rubbish in the oceans these days and rudders seem particularly vulnerable. Oh well, not sorry I asked.