Saving your boat with a boat alarm

6:15 AM Wed 30 Dec 2009 GMT

'Don’t let this happen to you...' .

Tom Lochhaas, from sailing.about , has sailed everything from a 14-foot Sunfish to a 50-foot ocean cruiser in his three decades of sailing.

His comments on reading the story of the sinking of yacht Kerstie while her owners sailed the boat on, unaware that it was filling with water, drew his very down-to-earth advice. Sail-World Cruising is happy to repeat it here:

I just read a news story of a 48-foot sailboat that recently sank in the western Caribbean after filling with water from an unknown source. Apparently the couple aboard did not realize they were taking on water until the floorboards were underwater and the bow down. At that point, they turned on the electric bilge pump and began frantic efforts to bail and find the water's source, but it was too late. Fortunately, they quickly issued a radio call for help and were rescued from their liferaft.

There are some lessons to be learned here, preferably in advance, before something like that happens to you. I'll describe what I've done on my own boat.

First, I've always disliked manual switches on bilge pumps, either a separate panel switch or the main battery switch. Imagine returning to your boat at anchor or dock and finding six inches of water inside from a slow leak. I'd much rather have a dead battery from a pump working in my absence than to have to make repairs because of water damage. In all my boats I've always directly wired the bilge pump (with its float switch) directly to a battery.

With my present sailboat's dozen through-hulls, I got to thinking about undetected slow leaks. Maybe in my absence the pump cycles on and off because of a slow leak-but not enough to kill the battery before I get back to the boat. So maybe I don't discover that slow leak until I have to leave the boat moored for a couple weeks and return to find her sunk because the battery eventually ran out. So I installed a bilge pump counter that clicks over once every time the pump comes on (photo). This way, hopefully I would find a slow leak by noticing that the pump has been cycling on and off in my absence.

Bilge alarm - .. .

I thought I was prepared, until one day I did develop a slow leak while cruising. A fitting at the base of the sink in the head broke, allowing the drain hose to flop over and spill water in every time the boat heeled on a wave. The water ran into the bilge and was being pumped out (unheard by us in the cockpit) over and over. I might not have found the problem for a long time if it weren't for my bilge counter, which I happened to see after the pump had cycled on a couple dozen times. But that got me to thinking: what if I'm taking in water more seriously while in the cockpit or asleep at anchor?

Exactly the problem of the couple who lost their boat. Once the water is deep over the floorboards, it becomes very difficult to detect its source-and of course you're also in a panic trying to pump and bail it out. The sooner you know the water has started coming in, the better your chances to find the leak and correct it.

So I installed a high-decibel electric alarm in my bilge pump circuit. Now I have to put up with its shrieking at me every time the bilge pump comes on because of the slow drip of the stuffing box or melting ice in the icebox, but I'd rather deal with that than worry about one day looking down my companionway to see a foot of water over the floorboards.

I can't guess whether a bilge alarm could've saved this couple's boat, since no one knows whether the extra time would have allowed finding and fixing the leak. But I do sleep better at night knowing I'll awake with at least a fighting chance.

Thanks Tom, we'll all be rushing out to purchase bilge alarms if we don't have them already!

by Tom Lochhaas/Sail-World Cruising