[WildBill]

I'm new to the forum so forgive me if someone had seen this one before. My first SeaCraft was a '79 23' Septre that sunk behind our hotel one early morning on Lower Matecombe west of Islamorada about 15 years ago. We always took on excessive amounts of water while fishing offshore and my 1100 gallon rule pulled major overtime. We looked and looked, filled the bilge with a hose when the boat was out of the water to no avail. One day my buddy Glen sunk his 23SF Potter hull off of Marathon and he commented that his bilge was full when it went down. He and a buddy were in the back corner trying to fish a trippletail with a net out of a 55 gallon drum floating on the surface about 10 miles outside of Sombrero light when a rouge wave came over the back. It went down in seconds! He was fishing with his dad in a second boat not too far away and was able to barely get off the Mayday. What we found out was that when the boats were manufactured and they installed the inner liners; the thru hulls for the live wells were only castle nutted inside of the live well. So when the boats were under way the inner liner would move and water would come into the bilge between the thru hull and the hull. After I pulled mine from the drink it sat for months being that I had already rebuilt it in Homestead after Hurricane Andrew. I eventually pulled the thru hull and sealed it with 5200 and castle nutted it to the hull and both sides of the live well. I've since sold it to a guy in Homestead and now am rebuilding a '73 20SF. I think now looking back that I should have sealed the hole, moved the location which was directly under the live well and plumbed it with flexible hose to eliminate stress from the movements of the hull and inner liner.