So the boat comes off the slips about two nautical miles from my mooring for an easy motor home today.
As my wife is driving the car back to the club I decide to speed the getting off the boat procedure up so swivel the kitchen sink tap around and start filling up a bucket of fresh water that I normally pump through the motor to leave it with fresh water inside. My normal procedure is to fill this bucket once I am moored and while the engine is still running.

As the bucket takes a minute or so to fill I jump outside to make sure we are keeping a straight course through the moored yachts and promptly forget about the filling bucket.
Quite a stiff breeze and come up to the mooring just right so feeling good and start descending the companionway to see about 11 inches of water all over the place 10 inches in the bilges above the keel and one inch above the floorboards. The bucket had been overflowing. About 2 seconds of panic before I even realized it was the bucket as I had not checked beneath the floorboards after they had put the boat back in the water It was just waiting at their pier for me when I arrived. There was no work on through hulls or anything like that so I didn't really think it necessary.

I have a procedure for getting off the boat and a little checklist in my mind which I don't deviate from even if I have a seasoned hand on board that offers to help. Obviously this time I deviated from my procedure with bad consequences.

My boat has a bilge pump aft under the engine and one in the forward cabin which is really the shower drain but none in the five little bilges above the keel which are not joined to each other and merely house two keel bolts each and a depth sounder and remain dusty dry except for today.
I have often thought about installing a bilge pump centrally and drilling a hole through the floors to join the five bilges above the keel but in the end decided not to as I didn't really want to drill through the floors. Plus of course I'm not going to install five more bilge pumps.
I have the engine water intake teed off to a longish line with a big heavy anode on the end which I can use as an emergency bilge pump for that area anyway. Didn't use that as I thought perhaps it might suck up a piece of grit or something so it took an hour and a half to get all the bilges bone dry with the one towel I had left on the boat having brought the others home to wash. Fortunately the boat has a full internal liner and no timber or timber veneer pieces going down to the level where the water came up to.
I normally leave the balance cock open for the water tanks either side of the boat to drain equally but I might not do that any more as had that been shut perhaps 1 tank would have run dry resulting in less water. There was less than a half a bucket in both tanks when I went to finally fill a clean bucket to flush the motor.

Lesson learned. Don't rush and deviate from your set procedures!
Especially when you're starting to get old haha.

Are you using a corrosion inhibitor/coolant in the engine coolant. If not, I suggest you start using it. It will prevent corrosion and helps lubricate things like water pumps.

Especially when you're starting to get old haha.

Now, why on earth did I open the fridge???

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MorningBird said..
Are you using a corrosion inhibitor/coolant in the engine coolant. If not, I suggest you start using it. It will prevent corrosion and helps lubricate things like water pumps.

No. It's a raw water cooled Bukh although I believe in previous ownership it was fitted with a heat exchanger to facilitate warm showers.

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julesmoto said..

MorningBird said..
Are you using a corrosion inhibitor/coolant in the engine coolant. If not, I suggest you start using it. It will prevent corrosion and helps lubricate things like water pumps.

No. It's a raw water cooled Bukh although I believe in previous ownership it was fitted with a heat exchanger to facilitate warm showers.

Ah, i knew there had to be such an answer. I didn't really believe you would have used raw water in a normal engine cooling system.