some other things to consider.....
My Roberts and Landfall both had deep
keel voids, both being
displacement type hulls.
On both those
boats, the
bilge pump and float switch was attached to an L-shaped
aluminum bracket I fabricated which was then lowered into the
keel void. The bottom of the L bracket had the float switches on, which were contained inside a protective cage.
Like others on this board, from time to time, I would use a wet/dry shop vac to suck up whatever resided on the bottom that the
bilge pumps would not pick up.
I would be constantly surprised at the amount of goop that dwells in those voids..spilled milk...spilled
beer...etc...oil, off course..
You can modify this setup to suit.
The
bilge on a
Beneteau is laugable. The
Beneteau, is a typical French style planing
hull....very flat bottom
The
hull is only about 6" below the
cabin sole.
The keel is bolted on, but the keel has a shoebox sized void, maybe half a shoebox size, which is glassed over.
There is no room in there for a
bilge pump of any size, thus the only thing you can fit in there are some 1" diameter hoses with a strum box, in addition to the manual
pump ( operated from a
cockpit locker) which was about 1.5"diameter. The three hoses in there pretty much fills that " bilge" up.
The " bilge" pumps are located under a dinette seat, there are two of them, the
boat comes standard with some woefully inadequate small sized pumps which I replaced.
The float switch resides on the hull, next to the bilge cavity, where it is attached with some 5200....I don't know how Beneteau had this attached originally, as I found the float switch laying on it's side, where it was inoperable.
By the time, the float switch kicks on, you will have quite some
water inside the
boat...especially so if the boat is heeled over, as all the water will rush to the low side of the hull...ask me, I know. You could have several 100 gallons of water in there, before being aware of any situation.
Additionally, inspecting this " bilge", required moving the centerline seating.
It's a totally crappy situation, but it's a fast sailing boat.
If ever a boat needed a
bilge alarm.....this one did !!
On top of all my other thoughts, here is one more....every time while on a
passage, I or one of my crew went below, we would take a quick look at the bilge to ensure all was well.
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