You have some good suggestions. Now, here is a very unlikely source for the
water. Is your cooler drain open or leaking? Also, when storing your boat
on it's trailer leave the drain plug out and elevate the bow as much as the
trailer jack will allow. Sometimes water can be trapped in a few places and
take a long time to find it's way out of the drain. I've found that by
lowering and then raising the trailer jack a couple of times I can almost
always get a little more water out the drain.

Butch
"Tom" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:05:40 -0500, Misifus
wrote:

I have a problem which is not serious, or is it?

I recently bought a used Tidecraft center console boat, 17 feet
with a Mariner 115hp outboard. When I take it out, it always
makes some water in the bilges. Usually, the bilge pump gets it
out in a minute or two, and when I pull the plug on the ramp
water runs out for a thirty seconds, or so.

As I said, these are not major amounts of water, but I don't know
whether this is normal or not. Today we were out for about two
hours on pretty smooth water (Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas). I
didn't see any water coming on board from, for example, letting
the following wave come over the transom. Am I concerned about
nothing? Is this commonplace on powerboats, or is there reason
to look harder for a leak? TIA

It's not really commonplace and consider that it could get worse -
probably at the worst possible time so it would be best to locate and
repair the leak. Check any through hull access points (drain plug,
bilge pump discharge, live well pump etc.) and any hoses associated
with them. Most of those are plastic and will deteriorate over time (
I once had a bass boat nearly sink because a live well hose broke and
was just open access to the lake). If all of that is OK you might want
to check to make sure there is no hull damage that could allow water
access. Good luck with your search. Take care.