Finished a Yanmar Installation Today and...

[Chief Engineer]

I called the customer to remind him to turn the water on before starting the engine......
He said what?.....
Thinking it was a bad cell I said turn the water on......
Hunh? What do you mean.....
You have to open the seacock.......
The what? What's that?
It's that valve that is on the thru hull...near the batteries...
You mean the valve is on the engine?
NO...........it is a valve on the thru hull.
Why do you close it?
I always close all thru-hulls when I leave the boat...Sure beats a call at Oh-Dark Thirty.

I tell ya what.....I will come down ON SATURDAY to show you.

(ILOVEMYJOBILOVEMYJOBILOVEMYJOB) It sure beats the Rodent Regatta

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha Chief,

That's good. I'll bet you meet all kinds.

I helped a friend launch his newly home built boat and told him that he should have an electric bilge pump onboard. He said that he would stay aboard and bail with a bucket as the water came in. I said ok but he'd be up all night bailing. He said he was ok with that. Just before he had the crane lift the boat from the cradle on a truck I asked if he had closed all the seacocks. He said yes he had.
A little bit after the boat was in the water and the straps from the crane were removed he climbed down into the boat to find a solid stream 3/4" by 2 feet high where the engine seacock was.
He hadn't installed the engine yet so had forgotten about it. Good thing he checked when he did.

Othere than that the launching went well.

regards

[Chief Engineer]

Somewhere in my Library I have an old Navy Manual
that says for hole x inchies in diameter
and y number of feet below the waterline
you have z number of gallons per minute coming in.

[GordMay]

Approximate Flooding Rates, for smooth holes at specific depths, are calculated using the formula:

Flooding Rate in GPM [Q] = 20 x D x √H

where:
D = diameter of hole in inches
H = depth of hole underwater in feet (head)
√H = square-root of H

Hence, for a 2" diameter hole at a 3 Ft depth:

Q = 20 x 2" x √3 = 20 x 2 x 1.73 = 69.2 GPM (4,152 Gal per Hour)

The actual initial flow rate ('Q') will be less than calculated above, due to frictional & turbulence losses at the aperture.

More ➥ http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ion-20328.html

[Sonosailor]

Bit of a segue:

This year we were in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, sleeping with the radio on, when a French Canadian started screaming his boat was sinking at about 2 am. The Coast Guard in Martinique tried to assist, but it appeared (again) that few cruisers have their radios on overnight. I called in that I was coming, got a general description of boat and location, gathered up buckets, tapes, straps, and plugs, and started dinghying the mile or so to his boat. A couple of other guys got there first, and got it bailed to where the bilge pumps would keep up. They had left and he was sitting there dazed, with no pants on. He said he had returned from shore and found it half-sunk.

I said he/we ought to figure out what through-hull was the problem. With all the boards up, we could see that no flow was coming from the engine, and that some was coming from the bow. A further look showed that his toilet was full to the brim, and still just trickling over. Another common problem - toilets below the waterline that only sometimes overflow when valves are all left open, but cascade as the waterline rises.

Never did figure out the pants thing. Maybe I just don't go to the fun parties he does.

The longer version of this story is hilarious (I swear) , and can be found on our blog at:
Gone Sailing: Man with a Bucket at 4:30 am