For those who have interest, either in solving their own problem or
helping out a fellow boater, I have continued troubleshooting my water
leakage problems over this past weekend.

For those who have not read my previous postings on this subject, I am
taking on significant water underway, but not a drop while she is
dockside. My friend managed to track the water ingress as coming from
forward of the engine room bulkhead, but nothing more specific. I have
installed both a counter and a high water alarm for monitoring the
problem.

First, while installing a counter and not a chronometer seemed like a good
idea at the time, it is less than useful in all points of monitoring. I
believe it is more useful at the dock than a chronometer, as it can be
reset, and provides a clear indicator that something has happened without
having to use a logbook to store and retreive previous values. Underway,
the counter will cycle unecessarily as water sloshing in the bilge will
trigger the float to activate even if it is only a split second. I am
investigating putting a delay in the pump circuit where once the bilge
pump is activated it stays on for a predetermined length of time (say 15
seconds) to negate the inherent limitations of the counter alone.

At 5pm Friday afternoon, we headed out on on Lake Erie about 17 miles to
South Bass Island. I had planned on stuffing plastic bags into each
unecessary above the waterline thru-hull (with a string leading to the
deck for instant removal), to confirm or alleviate this suspect as a cause
of my problem. We neglected to do this as we did not have a dock reserved
at our destination, and wanted to leave enough daylight for our return
trip if necessary.

During our trip we were taking 1 to 3 footers on our forward port quarter,
with our ground speed ranging from 16 to 20 miles per hour. I was less
than methodical, failing to keep track of the miles between cyclings, as I
was counting on the counter to work adequately (stupid me). After going
from zero to a high cycle number on the counter, I figured out the problem
and whenever the counter activated, I manually ran the bilge for 30-60
seconds to insure the bilge pump drained everything it could with each
cycle, I then reset the counter. I did not keep track adequately, but
figured the water level increased enough to activate the float switch
between seven and ten times.

Sunday we left with a slightly more methodical approach. After leaving
the harbor, we broke our trip back into five mile increments. Our first
five miles was in complete displacement mode. We ran between 1500 and
2000 RPMs with a ground speed of 9.3 to 10.3 MPH. The lake was very
sloppy, with 2-3 foot steep waves, mostly from the boat traffic within our
course. After 5.6 miles of bouncing around at our leisurely speed, the
counter did not increment once. When we turned the pump on manually, no
water came out. We then increased speed to between 2000 and 2500 RPMs
which put us at about 12 to 13MPH, just on the verge of a full plane.
The counter only incremented once. For our last leg we increased our RPMs
to about 2800 and the counter started incrementing aproximately every 1.5
miles. After the fifth increment, we slowed back down below 2000RPMs and
did not run the bilge manually.

At the dock I ran the bilge manually which pumped water for about thirty
seconds. I then pumped the remaining water out, which was less than five
gallons to dry the bilge. My guess was a total of about 18 gallons.

I am still suspecting the boat is splashing water into a thru-hull or
perhaps a lack of caulking on the underside of the hull deck joint
somewhere. The faster we travel, the more water splashes into this
unknown area. I think if this were leakage were due to a crack it would
show itself at the slower speeds still stressing the crack in rough water,
which it doesn't seem to. I'll need to get the boat on out on a calm day
to confirm.

My plans are to develop more foolproof monitoring methods and a more
methodical approach to get an accurate picture of what is happening. At
the very least, develope a solid baseline so the condition can be
monitored for deviation.

Questions? Comments? More importantly, solutions?

Bob Dimond

In article , wrote:

Thanks, Bob....will keep all this in mind when I go back to the boat
this weekend and investigate some more.

"Bob D." wrote:

Jim,

I'm having the same problem, and am still investigating it.

Here are some things to keep try or keep in mind.