How Long Will Your Bilge Pump Last in Emergency?

[oldsalt_1942]

The most effective bilge pump on a boat is a panicked person with a bucket!

[moseriw]

Originally Posted by oldsalt_1942

The most effective bilge pump on a boat is a panicked person with a bucket!

Sorry, it ain't true. 4gals a bucket with 4 buckets a minute (fill, bring it up the stairway, splash, go down) makes 1200gals per hour and then your too much exhausted.

[Wallaby]

This may be one of the most pertinent issues I've seen on this board. My reason for saying that is a 40ft-plus offshore fishing boat just sank at my marina. I don't know the cause yet, and it happened rather quickly; however, it drives home the message.

Now, in additional to a manual pump, I already have 3 bilge pumps, a 500gph switched pump to do 'cleanup', a 2200gph with a float switch, and a 4000gph (float switch) at a higher level for emergencies. I am right now looking for another 4000 'Evacuator' for backup. I am thinking of fitting a collapsible hose to it so I can loan it when needed.

[SV DestinyAscen]

Bucket bailing will be slower than manual pumps. You'll be surprised how little actual water stays in the bucket when you have tired stressed people passing buckets to each other.

If resources are available and innovation desired, human ergonomics basically guarantee that a impeller pump with proper priming characteristics turned by human legs on a crank will be the most reliable emergency pump. Connect the foot pedal/crank and sit in the cockpit and crank.

[newhaul]

To many variables to give even an educated guess. However for me personally it will last plenty long enough to evaluate and repair.damage to reduce water ingress, or inversly enoigh for me to gather my ditch bag and any extras I feel I may need when I step up into my liferaft. To and including a general mayday broadcast with my location

[roland stockham]

Sorry but you just lost the boat! your pump is rated at 14v, your small, old, semi discharged batt is probably 11.5 at best so you 4000gph pump is now struggling to shift 1000gph (exact number can't be known). Even on a good big house bank your pumps loose a lot if running without the engine. What may save you is if you have a portable mains powered one and enough juice to run the inverter, at least then you will get full output while the power lasts.
It is also worth remembering what is meant by 'continuous duty', which this pump is not! Continuous duty means you should be able to switch it on and leave it on and it will run for its rated life. None continuous duty means if you do that it will burn out! There is no number on this and I am pretty sure no manufacturer would admit to one. It is also going to depend on weather the pump is fully submerged because the motor is then water cooled. A not uncommon performance that I know from power tools is that they are often built to run for no more than 10min continuously on a 25% duty cycle. That means 15min in every hour but in no more than 10min bursts (it is why cheap sanders and polishers never seam to last whereas drills do!). So even if you have a good house bank available the service life is probably going to be limited by the pumps life not the batteries!!! Thats why the recommendation is always to fit 2 if possible.
Sailing problems never have simple answers

[seabreez]

I work for a company and when there is a storm... and a weekend goes by the tug is sunk on Monday morning when we het to the job site. I installed a 1400 bilge automatic pump and though I had it. The following storm the boat is sunk again and the battery is dead dead. The battery is a new 4d. It will not last many hours. I have no idea how long the pump ran. When we lifted the tug the last time I found out that it was raining in there when there is a storm or rain. Now we have plugged all holes where water can get in. Now the tug does not sink anymore... If I were you I would plug the hole with anything you can put your hands on and worry about the pump after...

[RickG]

Originally Posted by Pete7

You are making the assumption that over the hour there is a linear flow of water with a 3 foot of head through a 2" hole.

That may not be true in the case of a yacht. A hole in a dam yes, but on a boat well there are all sorts of interior objects that are going to reduce the free area even temporary from allowing the water to flow throughout the hull. Thus whilst the failed seacock might start 3 foot below the water after some minutes the water will have risen but the hull probably won't have sunk by an equal amount, so water level inside the hull rises in comparison to sea level slowing the flow.

Also 4152 GPH sounds an awful lot of water, have a look at this, its not exactly pouring in even accepting US gallons are a bit on the short side compared to other countries gallons.

I remember the first time I saw this video I added "plastic warping" to my list of boat safety equipment. I also bought a couple of the "Forespar StaPlug Soft Foam Cone-Shaped Emergency Boat Plug" that could plug this hole.

Cheers, RickG

[nautitrix]

I can see that many have heard of the "scared man with a bucket" scenario. The truth is you quickly learn that a sloshing motion with a 1/4 filled bucket moving back and forth emptying through the companionway will buy the skipper enough time to be on the radio seeking help. The bilge pump and the scared man can keep you afloat long enough to get into the dinghy but the point you have missed is it is a waste of time to lift the batteries as even lead acid batteries function for quite a while under seawater. If the boat is mono-caulk you may be able to slow the filling enough to find a leak and plug it but a wooden carvel boat will start taking on water faster as she settles and the dry (above waterline seams) start to leak. From experience I suggest that you leave the lights on when you abandon her as they will function well into the night and serve as a beacon to rescuers..........just sayin'

[SailingFan]

I do have to wonder, however, folks, because on my trip up the ICW this last spring, I saw literally dozens of direlect craft along the way, very few actually sunk in the water, most up on the Western side of the ICW, assumedly from storm surge (and likely too complicated to remove). I saw no holes on the hulls of those vessels, where the hulls were visible. I also saw that many still had various forms of rigging on board (too bad it is illegal here to salvage that stuff on those apparently abandoned vessels, I actually could have used some of the things I saw even as I meandered my way North).

I also have been considering how many vessels are on CraigsList, eBay, and the like, and would pose the question, just how likely is it that you would even be aboard when a vessel went down, given that they generally do not get holed at sea, more often they simply have deck leaks or other surface above the waterline issues that get neglected or hoses that fall off while the vessel is tied to a pier or anchored with nobody aboard? Far more vessels sink at the dock than do at sea, especially since the days of fiberglass hulls and in many cases, flotation qualities of things installed and even stored on board most vessels.

When in Daytona taking delivery, I noted what I considered a (to me) large recreational yacht that was something like 65-70 feet in length. She was docked in a covered bay of a very large structure over the dock section that seemed to be the "preferred" area of the dock berths (pass code gated and all), and her pumps opened up every few minutes with what must have been 50 gallons or more of water at a time. Then they would turn off for perhaps two or three minutes, and back on again. Continuously cycling.

I cannot imagine how much water was coming into that vessel, but it was tied securely to the dock, and if power failed, with her size, she would surely have been the new furniture there because she was so wide that she would have wedged in alongside the vessel she shared her berth with tightly enough to damage them both had one been able to escape the other's crushing weight pinned against her.

I was told by several live-aboards there that this was not unusual for this large vessel, that it was normal for her to keep dumping this volume and that they were also concerned that her pumps may one day lose power. The boat was barely a few years old, too, and in otherwise apparent pristine condition. Sad. My bilge was dry and dusty, and mine is a tiny 27 ft 1978 sailboat with leaky windows that the PO had silicone caulked closed, and that million plus dollar boat cannot keep water out while berthed UNDER A DRIP FREE ROOF!

I guess my question is whether boats that leak like a sieve through the hull should even be allowed to take up otherwise useful space at marinas for longer than required to effect repairs sufficiently to get the vessel to a shipyard due to the hazards those vessels represent to other customers when they do lose power and sink while tied to the dock, often taking other also costly (or even cheap like mine) vessels at the dock with them into the briny (as this vessel would potentially have done).

If such a vessel destroyed yours through this sort of event, what is your thought about it being tied alongside your vessel/home? Would you want to be anchored near such a potential reef and risk swinging into it when the tide changed post-sinking, or would you be happier if marinas refused to allow such vessels to remain beyond X days/hours/conditions? And if yours were the vessel in point, what would you expect others to do when you were in this situation and placed them in same?

I have often thought about that ship, and wondered how, with the seadoos and speedboat on her stern, she should be so leaky that the owner could not afford to liquidate a side asset and fix that hose/hole/seam/crack/mount/seal/gasket/etc.. and prevent this sort of issue from concerning others nearby.

I had never been in that situation before, and have always been around vessels that were either seaworthy enough to float without mandating constant bilge pumping or they were repaired so that they WERE seaworthy enough to float without that level of constant bilge pumping, especially when the vessel was that new.

The USS Forrestal (CV-59) was commissioned about 1955 and in 1989 she did not leak like this newish recreational vessel did, and the Forrestal was 1039 feet long, with 4 acres of flight deck and as wide as a WW2 destroyer was long. She was maintained to be sure, but there was a LOT more area that could have been leaking and 80,000 tons of displacement to the carrier, so more force to get water pushing inside any available hole. But she did not leak like that the entire 4 years I was aboard her.

[Alastair A]

Oops me some computer glitch. Pardon me if I duplicate in reply.
"Good on Ya" Steadyhand for launching this discussion. It is real for me and a reality check for others I trust. I have had 2 planks on a traditional wood 32foot sloop stove in (likely by a log or tree stump). It was 18 inches below waterline and it was spectacular. We saved the vessel by acting instantly to close down the flow in the first instance (good packing and careful use of the hack of a hand axe. We used 2 manual whale gusher bilge pumps to good effect. One operator was waste deep in water to do this in cabi n(within dive out range of the companion way). Daylight and reasonably calm seas assisted getting and external sail on the damage. we also bagged almost the whole hull underwater with the spinnaker as we had no engine at this stage. All's well that ends well.
I appreciate Sailingfun's earlier reference to the wall of the "Al Capone suite". Coincidentally my great grandparents in law owned a neighboring tailors shop on the immediate back face of this wall. They were always most pleased it was brickwork. If this wall had been usual boat hull construction my family would be history.
Cheers everyone in cruising. A

[Alastair A]

Hi sailing fun. I appreciate your reference to the wall of the Al Capone suite. My family had neighboring tailor shop on the back of this wall. The heavy brickwork saved them and they always felt good to be alive after this day. Cheers for good historic references. Please see my comments otherwise below in this thread. Best wishes. A.

[tkeithlu]

OK. I do have an OH MY GAWD pump, gasoline powered 100 GPM or so, and the suction hose can be plumbed to the engine room from inside a galley cabinet above it. BUT, I have real doubts about it - do I really run that motor often enough to be able to count on it? Can I get the pump primed in time? I really don't know. I have made one change recently to deal with the loss of the house batteries from flooding. I installed one battery behind the instrument panel in the wheelhouse, with a switch that either makes it part of the house bank, keeping it charged, or disconnects the house bank from the wheelhouse and runs all the electronics off that battery only. Therefore I do at least have power to call for help after the house batteries are under water.

[Alastair A]

Ps. In the test photo above, they should be bagging the whole of the bow and prow. Then set a fast sail course to drain and "press on" the bag in the sea. Then set another overall bag sail and keep going forwards as fast as you can to close it onto the hull. Keep all emergency gear and battery for emergency comm's and evacuation in timely manner. You will need it and should have called it in long prior. We were OK and I live in thanks each day. Cheers A

[Alastair A]

I'm glad to see that cruisers and sailing forum maybe an (incompetent) comedy forum leading up to Christmas. Please lets get real, all sailors. The sea stops flowing for nobody. Best seasonal wishes for all. Cheers and happy and buoyant sailing for all. A.