After living in Carnarvon where it never rains and moving to Innisfail where it always rains my boat let me in a little issue she has.

A constantly wet bilge.

I had no idea how the water was getting in and it was starting to hurt my head.

The bilge pumps do a great job of getting the water out yet there's always that little ( a lot...:) of water that the pumps won't suck up. Some research online and I decided to go down the arid bilge road and make a couple of set ups for the big duck, being a cat there's two of everything. I jumped online and ordered the pumps and timers and a trip to Cairns to the worlds best retic store saw all of the piping requirements met. The local electrical store provided the boxes and cover plates and I was in business. 
 

Whilst I was waiting for the gear to show up a mate of mine came over from Busso to hang out for a couple of weeks and we ended up down at the boat trying to work out how the water was getting in. Bilges were wet vacced dry and water was sprayed in all manners and styles with the water still getting and no obvious path shown. New deck hatch seals were installed and still the water got in. The bilges have a 70mm stringer running down the guts of em and I put a pump on one side to get rid of the water. One morning it clicked.... the water was only getting into the side that the pump was on. Switch sides and bust out the hose, hey presto the water is now on the other side. Turns out the water was running down the gunnels over the back of the transom and straight down the bilge outlet hole into the bilge. Fuck me....... The bilge outlets are high on the transom not giving enough height to have a loop in the pipe to stop this from happening, quick solution was to sikaflex a bilge blower clamshell over the outlet and no more water problems. 
 

Having collected all the gear to make a dry bilge system I went ahead and installed it anyhow. Pretty simple setup. A small diaphragm pump on a 12v timer with a pickup point on each side of the stringer, the pickup points are light switch faceplates with a barbed plastic thread running through em with a sponge on the bottom. Water gets sucked up by the sponge and sent over the side.

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