After an hour of letting it soak, the pump began working much better,
and started spitting out bisquit sized chunks of salt. After ten
minutes of pumping lake water thru it, the chunks began decreasing to
dime-sized and smaller, then down to small chips.




"Bart" wrote
Interesting. You should have taken some pictures.

Sorry


....Thanks for
the tip, I'll be sure to check my older pumps.

Manual bilge pumps are important on any boat. They give you
an accurate idea of how much water you are taking in per unit
time.

If you keep count of the strokes, yes.

.... People who rely on electric pumps suddenly discover
problems when they lose power, compounding problem on top
of problem.

But then, they get to see the truth of whether a scared sailor with a
bucket is really as good at moving water as a bilge pump.


"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote:
I disagree. Manual bilge pumps are unnecessary.

Sure. It would be much better to have a boat that never ever leaked at
all, for any reason. Unfortunately the only way to that is to have an
imaginary boat.......


.... It is rightly said that
a frightened man with a bucket can get rid of water faster than any
manual bilge pump.


It is only "rightly said" by those that never tried it.
Some years ago I put on a few demonstrations for the Sea Scouts and
for the Power Squadron. Putting a huge tub on the dock, I then took
our small Edson portable and pumped it 3/4 full of water. Then a
volunteer would try to bail water out of the tub with a bucket faster
than I pumped it in.

Most of the time, a person could move more water for about the first
30 seconds... after that, the small pump could move more water than 3
people with buckets.... furthermore they didn't have to lift the
bucket as far as a person trying to bail out a boat.

The demo was concluded by having one of the exhausted bailers work the
pump while some fresh meat tried bailing, and it was no contest.



Here's a hint for you that might save lots of emergency pumping or
bucketing. As many times a leak comes from a thru-hull or a
broken/jammed seacock or ball valve or hose all you need to make a
temporary fix is some toilet plungers in stock.....


This is an original idea I came up with all by my lonesome and I have
even used it to replace thru-hull ball valves while the boat was in the
water. It works great.


It is an original idea, all right. Why ruin it with the pretense that
it applies to reality?

DSK