Help/advice needed please

[Herrie_die_strandloper]

Hi all

I bought an 18 ft Rob craft with 2 x 70 Evinrudes. The boat was in for servicing. It stood out in the open and we had heavy rain. The boat was tilted forward. When I got the boat back I had it at home and some more rain fell. I was doing some smaller electrical work on the boat  and heard a slushing sound under the front deck. It appears as if the complete hull is filled with water. There are drain plugs at the aft in place. I lowered and lifted the boat, but not a drop of water comes out of the boat.

What can I do to get the water out?

Regards

 

[Fin-S]

Welcome.
It is difficult to come up with an exact answer - there could be a number of issues.
Has the boat been surveyed, does it have a current bouyancy certificate, how was this calculated. Has it been refurbished, etc.

From a distance I would imagine the forward compartment has a bulkhead limiting water flow to the stern. When the boat was bow down, water has run into this forward compartment from a leak in the deck.
You may be able to drill an inspection hole and physically inspect the area. If it is full, suck it out, add some flotation if it is empty and seal the deck.
At the same time make another inspection hole in the rear deck and make sure the drain tubes can work and are not sealed off or blocked.

Worst case is you may have bought a dog and need to redo the whole lot. Somewhere I recall a thread on a Robcraft refurb, not sure if it was here or boatfishing.co.za

 

[Herrie_die_strandloper]

Hi
Thanks for the reply. I picked up the boat with a new buoyancy certificate as well as a certificate of fitness from companies in Gordons Bay! The guy said they weighed the boat and calculated this and that and was satisfied that the boat was fine. If you look down the drain plug
at the aft of the boat, you can still see a lot of empty 2litre Coke bottles!


Herrie

 

[Fin-S]

Coke bottles are not legal flotation....this would make me concerned and I definately would have a look under the desk. There may be other materials that are perfectly adequate - but I would want to make sure.

 

[MichaelK]

You should have inspection hatches in your boat. Open the inspection hatch and using a pipe extract the water from the hull.

You seem to have serious issue with your boat, you may have a cracked deck and as a result the water is leaking into the hull. The only way to check that is to seal up your scuppers and fill up your deck with water, leave for a few hour and then remove the hull drain plugs.

With regards to the water not draining out, your hull is compartmentalized and as a result the water in the front is not draining to the back.

If that was my boat id extract the water, do the water leak check as mentioned earlier, if water is found, remove again, then remove deck carpeting and fiberglass all deck edges. Do a water leak check again and then replace carpets.

Secondly, using your inspection hatches, remove the bottles and purchase high density foam otherwise known as sondor. You get it in noodles and refill your hull with that. It provides much more boayancy.

You will however have to have your boayancy certificate redone if you go that route.

Remember the new legislation requires 60% or more boayancy at the rear of the vessel. As mentioned before bottles do not provide sufficient boayancy as a result most older boats who have boayancy redone are filled with high density foam in the rear and bottles in front mostly.

 

[Silverspider]

You cannot have a new buoyancy certificate where that certificate relies on coke bottles for buoyancy. If you do, you need to immediately report whoever gave you that certificate to SAMSA.

In terms of fixing the issue, I have nothing to add that has not been said above already.