This week I came home to a couple of feet of water in the bilge. It turns out that someone must have left the forward shower faucet on and it drained all of ...

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skill here at the sailing vessel

dreamchaser and in today's episode we're

gonna go ahead and work on cleaning the

bilge pump we have a primary and a

secondary and tertiary bilge pump in

this particular boat the primary one

which is the one that kicks on and off

anytime is a little bit of water in the

bottom of the bilge it just seems to

sort of be trickling out the side of the

boat when it does kick on it's not

really throwing the water out very well

so we're gonna hop down there and take a

look my guess is it's just sort of

filled up with some gunk and dirt and

garbage from the bottom of the village

so not a fun job but one that we really

need to do here we go

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sometimes people wonder just how far

does the bilge pump go in well there you

have it I'm actually standing in the

floor of them you know standing on the

base of the floor so this thing is a

little bit higher than waist level and

actually could go down another well I

guess about a foot to the another foot

to the lower portion of water and

another foot below that to the

absolutely lowest portion of the bill so

we will stop right here I went ahead and

got my scrapers and a little pail with a

bucket a bag in it and that's just so I

can get down below and get some of the

garbage scraped off of there instead of

using the towel right away so let me

show you what it looks like down there

here we go taking a look down here I'm

just aiming this street down at this

point

and again you can really see so I can

use it off to get right down there this

is the this is the very bottom of the

build and you can see that large white

sort of sock as just an oil absorber we

always keep down at the bottom make sure

and then below that is the primary bilge

pump that you can see here the secondary

on right and the tertiary on the left

small white hose their small clear one

is actually a condensation line or the

forward air conditioner this is the

forward side of the motor right here now

it's just a matter of lifting up this

bilge stock and getting it kind of out

of the way I just tucked it up here

behind the bilge pump for a few moments

and at this point it's preparing my

scrapers and starting to scrape along

the the sides and the base of the bilge

you'll notice here I started on the on

the vertical sides where there was a

little bit of buildup and just sort of

went to town I'm gonna fast-forward

through some of this because it'll take

a little while to get all this cleaned

up now that I got the base scraped out

it's in a matter of lifting the bilge

pump out of the primary sump hole and

and just getting ready to clean this up

not a pleasant job here but I started

with just getting the bilge pump into an

area where I could get to it and

scraping some of the heavier dirt off of

it before actually wiping it with a with

a towel once the outside was relatively

clean I went ahead and disconnected the

hose and removed the bilge pump from the

the hose itself just to give myself some

more room and honestly then it was a

matter of really digging around in there

something and cleaning everything out

like I said it's not the most pleasant

job in the world but it does have to be

done from time to time

they're certainly dirt gets down there

any dust or you know in our case you get

a little bit of cat hair and those

things all sort of work their way down

into the bilge and ultimately with any

liquid or water that goes in there they

flow right in the lowest part of the

sump and that's ultimately what what

ends up clogging up the intake screens

on the pump itself which obviously can

cause a problem if your bilge pumps end

up being obstructed and can't exit water

out of the boat normally it's not really

an issue but in the case of an emergency

I want to make sure I know that these

things can can pump the water out of the

boat especially if there was a through

hole that was leaking or a hose that

broke or something that you know gave me

a one-inch hole in the boat somewhere

with water flowing in once everything

was clean and I dropped it down again

and had to start all over and clean it

all off it was just a matter of

reassembling the bass you can see on the

bottom of it here there is no bass right

now I cleaned the screen and we just

snapped this back on to the intake

screen bass and reconnect everything and

we're starting to go after assembling

everything back together again I went

ahead and put about six gallons of water

down into the bilge just using a pail to

measure it made sure that the bilge pump

kicked on automatically and then went

outside and looked at the flow coming

out of the boat and it was certainly

coming out at the velocity that I would

expect where it exits the side of the

boat it was shooting out about three

feet or so which is kind of what I would

expect with an unobstructed pump so with

that we were good to go

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