First Sailing Trip – Shake down cruise – Calamity in the Channel

I got a call from Devon who was relaying information heard from the crew on the boat. They were motoring along with autopilot doing just fine and someone noticed that the carpet in the cabin was wet. So they pulled out the carpet and opened the Bilge cover to find TONS of water coming into the boat. So they were bailing out the bilge with the emergency hand pump AND the electric bilge pump. George went out to the Cockpit to empty a bucket and noticed that they were headed straight for a pile of rocks. So he luckily avoided that and they got the bilge pumped out. But basically they almost ran aground while almost sinking the boat. It turns out that the bilge pump hose outlet goes underwater while cruising and creates a siphon into the boat. So the bilge fills through the bilge pump that is supposed to empty it. I’ve read about the siphoning issue before but didn’t realize our own Bilge pump would be an issue.

So George replaced the bilge hose with a new longer one and also installed a Siphon-break loop at the stern. This shouldn’t be an issue again. He also purchased a hand powered emergency bilge pump just in case. So now we have 3 pumps, the Electric Bilge Pump, the “Guzzler” hand powered pump mounted in the engine compartment, and the emergency hand pump.

Close call…. Averted!