All About Seaweed

Bilge

Summary
(please click on any of the pictures for a larger one - use the BACK button to come back)

This page describes the changes made to the original bilge as well as some additions made. The original bilge access was horrible. All that was there was a 4 inch deck plate that I could barely get my hand through.

You can see the only access that was originally in the cabin sole.

I don't even know how they got the bilge pump into there through this hole - let alone wire or plumb it!

The first task was to make some CAREFULLY placed cuts in the stripped cabin sole. With a flat-bottomed sharpie hull, there wasn't any room for error.

I kept the panels that were cut out to possibly use as removable hatches.

Next, I glassed in some braces on either end of the cutouts to both support the overhang of the subfloor where it blends into the keel, and to hold the lift-up hatch pieces.

Here are the cutouts and the cross-braces.

Here is the freshly painted bilge. Just look at that shine!

In the aft-most cutout, the bilge is the deepest and that is where I mounted the bilge pumps.

The lower pump is the main bilge pump. I put a second pump on a shelf about 6 inches above the lower one. This is the emergency (backup) pump. Each has it's own discharge hose and dedicated thru hull.

The red tracer hose that you see on the left comes from the forward-most bilge compartment that houses the shower sump (next).

Kind of cramped in here, but there is a shower sump mounted in the forward-most cutout. The bottom of this compartment is about 8" higher than the aftmost bilge for some reason. Yes, I CAN remove the sump from there if I need to.

The discharge hose exits aft and passes through the main bilge before going to an overboard thru hull.

You can see the problem I had with the shower pan drain hose coming in from the top right side of the picture. A flat bottomed boat requires some ingenuity! The sub-floor just happened to be the perfect thickness for some 1/2 hose to sit in! A little creative routing with the Dremel tool, and the problem is solved!

Here is another view of the two bilge access areas.

Here is the finished cabin sole area and the new cutouts.

Lessons Learned

Always figure out what you will need to fit into a space BEFORE you cut the opening.


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