bilge pump

[patch]

about to sail my new suncat,bought the manual,nothing about the bilge pump.i see hoses under the starboard side seats.i see a lot of stuff,no instructions on  what is what,water has collected under under the seats.all i need is info. on how the manual bilge pump works.

[tmorgan]

When I picked up my boat last month, there was a box in the cabin with the bilge pump handle, sail bag, etc.  The pump is in the cockpit, the black cover on the seat.  Open the cover, insert the handle and pump.

You'll need to try and identify where the water is coming from.  My boat is dry.  New boats have a sealed centerboard so water does not come from that unless the bolt is leaking.  Water on the cockpit floor from the centerboad line opening is normal.  But if you are getting water under the cockpit seats, or cabin seats, you need to investigate.  There are a lot of suggestions on this site where older boats were leaking.

[patch]

thanks,my water came from the 3 feet of snow in the cockpit

[Craig Weis]

The bilge pumps on com-Pac's generally are all selfpriming positive displacement pumps. Find the handle and slide the handle over the pump's arm and pump. Within about 4 or so pumps it should discharge water out he scupper in the transom. At the start of every season skip tests the pumping systems on the trailer with the garden hose. It has to work. Additionally I installed a 750 gallon per hour [12.5 gpm] electric pump in the aft end and lowest point I could find in my hull. I 'hosed her in' down stream of the vacuum break or some would say, the highest point of the manual pump line with a tee. So the electric pump just dumps into the original factory manual pump hose line and out the scupper. The switch has 'auto-manual-test' functions and wiring is a little tricky but easy. This pump is the only electric device not fused protected and wired direct to the battery. If the boat is going down and I'm running for the beach to ground her I don't care about my 1000 amp hour cold cranking battery. On the electric pump I screwed the strainer that actually holds the pump and internal float assembly with fine mesh screen to a chunk of teak and used 3-M contact cement to hold the whole kit and caboodle down to the fiberglass bilge bottom. I first tried silicone but that let go of the pump in less then a season. It is important to 'denude' this area of all that crappy gray paint from the factory, as peels of gray paint will not transgress the electric pump, and you'll have pump failure. skip.