"Ree-Yees" wrote in message news:2bWmc.4344


What do you guys recomend? Should I plug that pipe or should I sea up the
hole with something better than a board?


No, do NOT block that tube!

Boats leak, it's part of the definition of a boat. Regardless of where the
water enters the boat it needs to find its way out. This usually means that
the water has to flow to the compartment where the bilge pump is.

If your leak (assuming it is only one) is in the back portion of the boat
then plugging that tube would prevent the water from going forward. This
might help isolate where the leak is and could be a good diagnostic
approach, but leaving the tube plugged will eventually result in the entire
front cuddy area filling with water until it was high enough to spill over
the step into the back. If you don't have a leak up there now, you
eventually will get one.

That little well underneath the board looks like a standard design to me.
It was nice of them to give you easy access to that spot, in case you need
to clean out that tube. In fact, maybe that's the problem, clean that tube
out!

One thing that surprises me is how shallow your bilge space is. Any boat
that I have ever owned or operated has leaked, at least a small amount. The
bilge pump will never get all the water out, so there will always be some
that splashes around in the bottom.

While underway, the bow comes up and the low spot in the boat is typically
in the very back. It is a good idea to have a bilge pump located here so
that it can remove the maximum amount of water while underway.

When you are at rest, the bow will be lower and the low spot may be in a
different location. It is possible that the low spot is far enough forward
that water can accumulate and cause the bow to start sinking before the
water level ever reaches the transom bilge pump. For this reason you should
have a second bilge pump in the "at rest" low spot.

Ideally, you would eliminate the leak and not have a problem.
Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world so you had best be able to
deal with a small leak. If the problem is that the small amount of water
that the bilge pumps can't get is enough to spill over into the cabin sole
then you have three choices:

1) get better bilge pumps.
2) redistribute weight so that the stern is a bit lower than the cabin at
rest.
3) raise the cabin sole to provide more bilge space.

Option three might be easier than you think. You can buy these rubber tiles
called "dri deck" that are about 1/2 inch thick and are constructed so that
water can flow through and under them. You just buy a bunch of these and
then trim them to fit the entire cabin floor, then put your carpet over the
tiles. This will give you another 1/2 inch of bilge space, plus the carpet
will dry a lot faster if it does get wet.

Rod McInnis