Boats, Water, and Curiosity

Why is the bilge pump running?

It was a valid question. Over the months that First Light has been in the water I'm not sure we had ever heard the bilge pump run. But there was the water pouring out of the side of the boat. The pump running nagged at Deb for most of the day, prompting her to open the bilge cover and, sure enough, there was still some water in the forward part of the bilge where the pump is located. (The cover is an easy lift with one hand.) We talked about it for a bit and my thought was that the Air Con units make water that has to go somewhere. Into the bilge was the obvious choice. But the Air has been running for weeks now. Would it take that long to make enough water to trigger the pump? I really had no idea. Then Deb reminded me that she had spilled a bunch of water in the galley the day before, water that had to go somewhere and would be added to that coming from the Air Con. So there was the answer, Air Con water plus spill equals bilge pump running. Except that Deb wasn't completely satisfied that was the complete answer. Me? It works. Don't fix it. There are lots of other things to fix. Water collected in the boat. Water got pumped out of the boat. It's all good. 

But she wanted to look further into the system. Even though I was pretty sure all was well, looking into it further was also okay with me because; a) over the years I have learned that when Deb wants to look into something it is probably something that needs looking into and, b) it would be a “looking into” performed inside the air conditioned boat. I'm all for working inside the boat, especially when both the temperature and dew points outside the boat are hovering around triple digits. 

Since we were cleaning out the bilge anyway, cleaning out the shower sump  (located in the forward part of the engine room aft of the main bilge section) seemed like a good idea. We haven't been using the boat shower much since we have access to unlimited hot water showers just steps away. So finding a bunch of slimy water splashing around in that box was a bit of a surprise at first. But then I noticed that the Air Con drain tubes actually run into that same box. So...where did the water come from that set off the bilge pump? It could not have been just the spill, that happened the day before the pump came on. Also, it seemed like there was a lot of water sloshing around in the shower sump. In fact the water level was over the top of the float switch. Mmm... I pushed the little test lever on the side of the switch and nothing happened. Closing the “Manual Sump” circuit breaker in the main DC panel had the pump clearing the water in just a few seconds. So, good pump, bad switch.

I have no idea how many float switches I have replaced over the years, but add another to the tally. The Inland Waterway Provision Co. located just a quick trot away had one in stock. (I loves me some Inland Waterway Provision Co. Good folks and lots of stuff in stock that boats seem to chew through.) Wiring in the new one was a pretty easy task, and although the air in the engine room is not nearly as conditioned as in that in the rest of the boat, a fan was brought down to facilitate a cooling breeze. Still, insofar as boat projects go, this one was pretty straightforward. But poking around in that system also answered the water in the bilge question.

In First Light, the bilge area and the sump area are separated by a wall about six inches high.. If one of the pumps should fail, or the water coming in be more than one of the pumps can handle, the overflow will have both of the pumps doing their best to keep the boat from flooding. But that takes a good bit of water. With the shower float switch not working, the Air Con water filled that space and, eventually, overflowed into the bilge area enough to trigger that pump. But it took a couple of weeks of constant use to do so. Without Deb's curiosity being aroused who knows how long we would have been putt-putting up the ICW with only a single pump armed to move water off the boat?

It is said that curiosity is fatal for cats. But it is a good thing to have around on a boat.

I loves me some dry bilge :)

Annnnnnnd....That's a Wrap

(Ed note: sorry for the heavily maintenance-oriented and long post. Life right now is pretty much about boat maintenance so if you're not into it, my apologies. It is unfortunately a huge part of owning a boat.)
 
As I mentioned in the previous post, we've been making an effort to achieve the holy grail of cruisers - the Dry Bilge. In Kintala, that's a particularly big challenge. Water comes down the inside of the keel-stepped mast when it rains, after having been given access through the sheaves at the top. Both the 40 and the 20 gallon water tanks vent into the bilge if you fill them to the point that you can actually tell they're full - by hearing the water rising in the fill tube. For some reason the 79 gallon tank doesn't vent into the bilge. Go figure. The fridge drains into the bilge - not a huge amount of water except for when I defrost it. The anchor windlass has a hole that the chain goes down that pours water into the chain locker which then goes into the bilge. Then there's the leaking rudder stuffing box and the spewing raw water pump, both of which added their contribution to the water level. This summer gives me a good chance to try to pair them down, one by one. The mast will always run water when it rains and nothing can be done about that. The water tank issue is difficult because there's no way to tell if the tanks are full until you hear the water gurgling in the fill tube. So over the next few weeks I'll be tackling the ones that can be fixed.

The one thing that you learn quickly about boat projects when you buy a boat is that no project is a project unto its own. They are all intertwined, all tangled up, and no matter how hard you try to tackle just one thing, you will without any doubt end up dealing with three or four other projects before you check it off your list. Part of our Dry Bilge Project was getting the fridge to drain into the shower sump box. The other day I temporarily routed it into our existing box, but it was our intention to change our box out to one of the newer, sealed plastic boxes that most boats use today. Over the past few weeks there's been a lot of discussion about where to put it, from where to power it, where to pump the water out, and access for cleaning. It had to be below the level of the fridge drain so that the fridge water would drain in there, and since one of the projects on my list is to replace the bilge pump with a new, fancy low-profile one, it gave us an opportunity to move our old bilge pump to a secondary position for a backup. Our old arrangement had the shower sump and bilge pump sharing a thru hull at a T fitting. I wanted that thru hull to be dedicated to both bilge pumps, and the shower sump to go elsewhere. (Are you feeling like musical chairs yet??) After a lot of thought I decided to use the old air conditioner thru hull for the sump box. I also decided to remove our old sump box and place the new one in its spot but much lower, leaving room to install a modified old sump box above it that would provide room for another case of beer when traveling to the Bahamas (score!).

The old sump box removed from its spot in the bilge

Our old sump box was fiberglass, huge, and had no sealed top. The floorboard hatch was the only top for it and it didn't seal well. Inevitably, the sump box would fill with nasty, soapy shower water and begin to smell. Funky smells in a smallish living space are not welcome. I tried various ways of cleaning it, but it still eventually won. It was also a ridiculous waste of space since it only accumulated about 4" of water before the pump kicked on, leaving more than a cubic foot of box unused. On a boat, a cubic foot of storage is gold.

Looking down into the old sump box. The visible block was where the
old switch was mounted that activated the pump under the galley sink.

First up in the project steps was to route the drain line to the old air conditioning thru hull. When we pulled the old a/c out, we routed a hose from the intake thru hull directly to the outflow thru hull so that in the even that the thru hull lever was accidentally opened, the water would drain right out of the boat. I needed to remove that hose, plug the intake thru hull, and install the new drain hose for the sump box. I loosened the hose clamp from the elbow fitting on the intake thru hull and when I pulled on the hose to remove it, the elbow fitting broke in half. Just fell off. It was completely corroded and had we still been using our air conditioner, we could have easily flooded the boat. Check  your thru hulls people, especially any bronze or (heaven help you) brass fittings on them. That thru hull will have to be replaced the next time the boat is out of the water but for now, since there's half a corroded fitting stuck in it, we have epoxied it closed.

Once the drain hose was routed, I needed a mounting option. Digging through our scrap wood box I came up with enough old teak pieces from various jobs to fashion a set of mounting blocks that would level an angled surface into a flat surface for the sump box. Since my only saw is a sabre saw, it took most of a day to cut, sand, glue and screw the mounting blocks. I then coated them with a coat of fiberglass so they wouldn't rot in the bilge, and then glassed them in place. By the way, if  you think the mixing ratio sounds a bit hot, trust your instincts and adjust it. Glad I did because even 1/3 less hardener and my cup was still too hot to touch.  It was a new resin for me that I'd never worked with so I was thinking I should trust the tech specs...wrong.

It's hard to tell in this pic, but the top of the box is about 10-1/2" down
leaving lots of room for a modified storage box above it.

While I was waiting for the glass to bake off, I removed the old sump pump and inline filter from under the galley sink and ran the new wire to the bilge. With the old pump removed, I added a splice fitting in its place in the hose so that the new bilge pump will have a hose to drain from. By the time I got that finished, the glass on my mounting blocks was hard and I was able to fasten down the box. Because of the position of the box in the bilge, I had to drill a hole in the other end of it and install another plastic thru hull to attach the fridge drain. The head sink and shower hoses and the outflow drain hose all attach on the forward end. The fridge drain on the aft end. With the hoses all attached and the box mounted on the new blocks, all that was left was the wiring. A couple of waterproof heat-shrink butt splices later we now have a fancy schmancy, new, sealed, funky-odor-free sump box. Score again!

Tomorrow I'll cut the old sump box in half and put a new bottom on it to use as the storage box above the sump box. I was going to do that today, but I decided that one should have a tested, functioning shower sump before destroying the old one that could be reinstalled if need be. You know, the old burning bridges thing...

And now, as a reward for any of you who actually stayed with me to the end of this post, here's another amazing pic I found I had forgotten on my camera card of the storm we went through in Blackburn Bay a couple weeks ago on the way up here. Enjoy!

The List and The Pile

While Tim works away at fixing things and making money for the privilege, I've been working away at fixing things and trying not to spend too much of the money he's been working so hard to make. My list of 34 items (still being added to by the way) has six nice check marks on it, all for just one week so I'm feeling pretty good. And this not even including the first two days that I spent trying to finish my taxes which hardly count as a boat project.

After the taxes were finished, I started out with a pretty easy day of small projects - removing the solar cockpit rope light (which was starting to act wonky and getting sticky) and replacing it with four new Luci Lights, installing a switch protector on the solar master switch in the aft cabin which somehow a jacket kept finding and turning off), re-routing our power cord so as not to trip up the 80's+ gentleman trying to get on to the neighbor boat, and fabricating a shelf support for the middle of our electronics shelf which somehow always gets overloaded and was starting to sag.

Day two of boat projects was supposed to be a very easy day of sewing. For those of you who don't own boats, you never, ever say Easy and Boat Project in the same sentence. It's guaranteed to jinx it. The chafe guards I wanted to make were easy as projected - rectangles of the awesome (did I say awesome?) boat blanket material that Sailrite sells with a strip of Velcro down one side. You only need the hook side of the Velcro because it sticks right to the boat blanket. Now we have chafe guards that can be installed after the lines are secure instead of trying to feed the lines through the vinyl tubing we were using before. The vinyl tubing slid down the lines, but the new boat blanket ones cling to the lines, can wrap around two lines together, and the fabric breathes, keeping the lines from getting moldy. I loves me some boat blanket.

The next project was supposed to be a very simple cover for the windlass to keep the rain from filling up our bilge. The windlass has a decent hole where the chain goes through the deck and the water just pours down there when it rains. I fashioned a bonnet of sorts out of a scrap of leftover Sunbrella, with space for the anchor chain and tie-down rope to pass through. It was very much like Tim's job - up to check the fit, down to sew the fit, up to check the fit, down to fix the fit, etc. etc. In spite of the extra time it took to fit, all in all I was pretty happy with it, except for the fact that the base of the windlass is only about 1/2" plate and it's not really high enough to grab the elasticized edge of the bonnet. This means that the hole is only partially covered if the bottom edge slips off the base. Can't much be done, so it is what it is.

The day finished out with a repair to our dinghy deck storage bag. Once the dinghy is folded up and wrapped up in the cover, there are two elastic cords that drawstring the ends shut tight. The elastic cord had rotted, like all elastic does in the tropics, and needed to be re-strung.

This is only half of the pile

Day Three found me in the bilge. We've talked about moving the fridge drain into the shower sump box in an attempt to get the bilge dry. This discussion has involved looking at options for adding one of the enclosed shower sump boxes instead of the open top one that we have (that smells funky). Since we are installing a new bilge pump and moving the old one into a secondary position, we're still not sure how the whole arrangement is going to look yet. As a temporary solution, I ran the fridge drain into the existing sump box with the addition of a plastic thru-hull into the box. Works great, so at least that water will be out of the bilge until we decide how to route the other hoses and pumps.

Next week will almost certainly be mostly in the bilge with a short break to install a '12V cigarette outlet in the cockpit for the new iPad mount that's coming later in the summer. If Tim is the Worker Man then I guess that only leaves Powder Puff for me...

Now where's that new set of flex-head wrenches I bought??