David_bone
Username: David_bone
Registered: 07-2012
Posted on Friday, May 03, 2013 - 08:43 pm:
Following a working life at sea onboard often elderly, sometimes leaking ships, I really like to access bilge suctions.
I live up a road with very steep hills and three years ago, after a friend's Winkle Brig visited, when he returned to sea level and opened his cabin, he found it awash with dirty water. Investigating, he found the end of the bilge suction pipe had displaced back up the otherside, so was not drawing and the water had probably accumulated in the bilge over a long period, invading the cabin by pitching on our road.
Consequently, I fitted an 8 inch Henderson watertight hatch at the after end of my cockpit, under the grating and a further 4 inch weathertight hatch in the deck directly below. I now have good access to the bilge well, which also liberated a good quantity of nuts, a rowlock and various other pieces of miscellaneous metal and rope.
In the bilge well, appeared the open end of a 1/2 inch garden hose, leading forward through the keel ballast to places unknown.
This year, I made a cutout (400 x 125mm) in the centre of the cabin sole, looking for a place to install a little extra lead ballast.
Under the cutout was about 30mm of waterlogged foam and the blocked end of the garden hose. After clearing the hose end, water continued to seep from the foam lining for about a week.
The foam under the cutout has now been replaced with 10kg of lead, with channels moulded in the underside, leading to the drain hose inlet.
Incidentally, water ingress had come from the portholes, which I had not fitted well enough when refurbishing the bulwarks and had tracked down between the inner and outer hull skins.
This led me to separating the bulwarks from the portholes by cutting the bulwarks round the portholes and equipping the latter with their own ply backing plates. I think Roger Parish did the same, as probably have many others. It should make a better watertight seal and allow either bulwarks or portholes to be removed independently with ease.
For interest, attached should be a photograph of the bilge well.