Seacraft sinks off Martha's Vineyard

[Greno]

The 20" transom on my boat is the one thing that scares the hell out of me. Routinely takes water and runs onto the deck and my 18 only has scuppers out the motor well. Mine will also runs water through the cable hole in the bulkhead, but only when loading on the trailer.

[John R]

Another friend of mine had a problem last week in his bay boat near Brenton Pt. Swells came over the 20" notch when switching tanks, the other 3 in the boat were bailing from the bow while trying to get restarted. Couldn't as too much water mixed into the 2nd tank. They were able to bail enough to get towed up the bay a bit.

[pelican]

wasn't your time to go guys...boats can be replaced,people can't be.i'm very glad to hear you guys came out well from this - coulda been real bad


take a lesson from this:
high bilge water alarm - any boat should have one installed - wired to be "hot" at all times - very easy to do - not sure how - ask,i'll gladly tell you how to do it

second bilge pump - wired to a seperate power source - meaning,2 batteries - 2 power sources - stagger the pumps - each battery powers a pump - this keeps the pumps independent of each other.

[DonV]

I completely agree, with your back up pump 1 to 2" higher with it's own battery. Plus in my case it pumps out of the oposite side of the boat. If I see water pumping from the starboard side I know I have issues with my main pump which pumps out of the port side.

[uncleboo]

I share you concerns, but, took a few steps to make me feel better.It's difficult to see in this old pic and I have replaced since this was taken, but, I used a whole tube of silicone caulking inside and out of the hole where the cables run through to seal it up. I haven't had any trouble with water coming in. I also have the bulkhead on the front edge of the splashwell to keep the water in the well. I keep the plugs in while on the water. The water that does get into the deck area goes through the livewell in the floor and I turn on the bilge pump once an hour as a precaution.


When I get around to replacing the transom, which isn't necessary right now, I'm going to take some additional steps to fix these issues, like raising the transom to 25" and the floor a couple of inches including the bottom of the splashwell.