A good friend of mine likes to say, “your boat is always taking on water, but its not sinking as long as you can bail it out faster than its coming in”.
This is true, you bilge will have water in it most of the time, if nothing else condensation will create water in the bilge, spillage etc. etc.
Don’t stress… follow these simple rules
- Is it coming in faster than you can pump it out
- If the answer is no, then take your time and find the problem
- if the answer is yes, find more ways to pump it out and then take your time and find the leak.
- Is it fresh water (you can tell by smell mostly, you don’t need to taste it )
- If yes, then you have a leak, either from your fresh water
- or from your NOT FRESH water or heads (so be careful to taste it)
- Every bit of fresh or waste water is already IN the boat. It can’t sink it. Just a problem to fix (They call it cruising :-)).
- Is it Raw water (Salt)
- You have a leak from outside, one way or another.
- Find it and plug it.
- Start by closing thruhulls. (It will usually be asssociated with a thruhull and closing one which stops it can lead you to the leak).
- Check drain lines from bow and stern(Engine room).
Always remember, your boat is always taking on water. It’s all about how fast it’s taking on water and how much time you have to fix it.