I had a big scare today, was sailing on a rather windy day and looked down into the cabin and found about 18" of water over the deck area. It came in real suddenly and steadily. I had a friend with a trailer that could handle the boat and we pulled it out after a lot of pumping. long drawen out process. Waht we found was that the knot meter sending unit was broken loose and that there was about a 2 inch hole in the hull where it had been. after looking every thing over we found that the sending unit had been sealed in with what appeared to be regular pipe dope. that hole will be patched but I will be checking the rest of the through hull fittings to see if they were put in the same way.
sudden flooding in area under head
- Thread starter Danny9462
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Sudden Flooding
Danny: I had a potentially similar experience when the boat yard put my '82 Hunter 27 in the water this summer. They told me the transducer for the depth gauge was loose and would require sealing. They applied "slick seam' around it and advised me to keep an eye on it and remove it when it comes out for winter storage and "rebed" it. I hope the knot meter sending unit was more accessible than the depth tranducer. I haven't investigated how the rebed the unit yet.
Danny: I had a potentially similar experience when the boat yard put my '82 Hunter 27 in the water this summer. They told me the transducer for the depth gauge was loose and would require sealing. They applied "slick seam' around it and advised me to keep an eye on it and remove it when it comes out for winter storage and "rebed" it. I hope the knot meter sending unit was more accessible than the depth tranducer. I haven't investigated how the rebed the unit yet.
Plugs
Sounds like you are very lucky, good job saving your vessel from the deep. I always carry tappered wooden plugs of various sizes that in an emergency like yours you can jamb in the hole and slow down the flow. Cheap investment.
Sounds like you are very lucky, good job saving your vessel from the deep. I always carry tappered wooden plugs of various sizes that in an emergency like yours you can jamb in the hole and slow down the flow. Cheap investment.
high water alarm
time to invest in an alarm. All it is, is a second bulge switch that send a current to an alarm. Install the second swith just a few inches above your bulge pump switch. That should give you the time to find the leak before the water gets too high and covers up the leak. Much easier to find a leak when you can see the water gushing out of the hull then it is to go around to each through hull and feel for water flow.
time to invest in an alarm. All it is, is a second bulge switch that send a current to an alarm. Install the second swith just a few inches above your bulge pump switch. That should give you the time to find the leak before the water gets too high and covers up the leak. Much easier to find a leak when you can see the water gushing out of the hull then it is to go around to each through hull and feel for water flow.
The knot meter sending unit is under the deck in the head we cut a hole in the deck and I will put in a access plate so that i can get to it in the future. I am thinking about just sealing off the unit, my gps does a real good job of letting me know how fast i"m going and it is a lot more reliable. I also keep a set of tapered plugs on board but I could not get to the leak was just lucky that a trailer was handy and I was not far form the marina
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