12/2/14
Beaufort SC
Posted by Bill

One of the questions we always seem to get from non-cruisers is “what do you do all day”? And the number one answer is “work on the boat”. There is always something that needs to be fixed or cleaned or checked. Somewhere in the Chesapeake Bay our bilge pump stopped working. The bilge is the bottom of the boat on the inside. Water drips in from the point where the propeller shaft comes into the boat (called a stuffing box), mostly when the shaft is turning, and eventually collects in the bilge. The rate of drip is one drop every minute or so, which is necessary to cool the shaft as it turns.

This does not create a lot of water and we have a manual back up pump, so unless we get a leak or run the boat into something hard, it is not a big deal. Needless to say, you don’t want to go very long without a functioning bilge pump, so as not tempt fate, and it is prudent seamanship to repair things when they break.

You may remember from an earlier blog that I got a new pump and tried to change out the old one while docked at our friends house in Nabb’s Creek. The bilge is about 12 inches deeper than I can reach so I can’t grab the bilge pump. Island Packet (the builder of our boat) put the pump and float switch on an L bracket so that you can pull the pump and switch up and can work on it. Problem was, someone before us installed a through hull just above the pump and in the middle of the bilge so you can’t pull it up to access it. The through hull is for the air conditioning/heating and we figured we will have to pull the boat out of the water to remove the through hull allowing us to work on the pump. Before we left the boat to go north we figured we better replace that pump, and Tricia (who was working when I tried the last time) was determined to find a way to get the pump out without hauling the boat, so we gave it another shot as a team.

This is the bilge access:

It is 16 inches square, and you can see that there is a lot of stuff in the way of working on anything down there.

I removed several hoses to improve access. Hoses are the worst things to work on. They don’t come off without a major fight and they don’t go on very easily either, and there was not much room to try and get leverage to take them off. After several hours, I finally got the hoses off and Tricia was able to magically maneuver the bracket around the obstructing through hull to where I could grab the pump. The pump had 2 clips that attached it to a base that was screwed onto the bracket. I could reach one, but the other was underneath the hose that is attached to the pump…if I could find the brain trust that designed that pump, I would beat him with it. I couldn’t get 2 arms/hands into the bilge at the same time to press both clips at once to release it, and I couldn’t do it with one hand, so I pried it off the base with brute force and a screw driver. Then I was able to remove the hose attached to the pump and we got the pump out.

Putting the new one on was child’s play compared to the removal of the old one, with exception of getting the hoses back on. The new pump worked great! Six hours of work, cuts and abrasions on hands and arms, major black and blue marks on arms and wrists, and bruised ribs. Pretty typical of a boat project!

The white thing in the bottom is the new pump: