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Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

Catalina 25 Specific Forum

Bilges Access in Swing Keel Dinette Model

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Lee Panza
Captain

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USA
465 Posts

Initially Posted - 04/29/2018 : 11:00:25

The bilges on my swing-keel model get a lot of water in them. They can stay dry while the boat sits still in dry weather, or even when I just go out for a relaxing sail in light-to-moderate winds, but when the wind is frisky, and the rails dip into the wave crests, I bring a load of SF Bay water back to the dock. There will also be water down there after a sustained period of rain.

Eventually I hope to eliminate the leaks (especially at the decks-to-hull joint), but it seems inevitable that a water-tight shell sitting out in the weather, and regularly taken out and bounced around in rough waters, will sooner or later have some water in the bilges.

These little Catalina 25's were not designed to be blue-water cruisers, so the company did not anticipate that any significant amount of water would accumulate down there, and in the swing-keel model no provisions were included for getting it out. I don't like not having access to areas below the waterline - for inspection as well as for evacuating the accumulation of water - so I have installed a couple of access ports in the saloon sole. One is under the dinette table and the other is just aft of the head area.

In the swing-keel model the keel case bifurcates the bilges in the saloon area, so the access port under the dinette table does not allow the water on the starboard side to be evacuated. There is also a solid bulkhead between the locker under the forward settee and the bilge area under the head. However, when heeled hard to port, it's possible for water to migrate over that bulkhead (it just comes up to the seat deck, and there's a gap between the liner and the hull at the port end of that settee).

I had considered a small port in the sole in the head area, but there is no flat place there for a commercially available cover plate and frame. Fortunately, I found that the bilge in this area is contiguous with the bilge under the saloon sole: there was open space beneath the step-down from the saloon to the head.

Here are some images, but I'll post a link to my Smugmug account after I put up a few more images there.

First is a shot of the port under the dinette table:

Secondly is a general shot during installation of the port just aft of the head area. I had previously installed two electric bilge pumps in the head area, which is the lowest point of the cabin sole:

In this third shot my phone was sitting in the hole I'd just cut in the saloon sole, looking about 45 degrees to port. The step-down to the head area, and the opening to the bilge there, is evident. The dark stuff in the left side of the image is some kind of hard material under the compression post. Since the compression post sits on top of the settee structure (which is integral with the liner), rather than extending down through it to the hull, I suspect that this material is structural filler that was slathered onto the riser extending up from the hull before the liner was lowered into place during construction. It would be necessary to provide solid contact between the compression post and the hull, but a precise fit between the two units would have been essentially impossible during production, so this could have allowed a loose fit to be filled; the excess would just ooze out of the way, and I think this little mound is just that.

This last shot is looking aft under the saloon sole, the keel case is clearly evident to port (to the right in this image). The bulge between the keel case and the hull is where one of the keel pivot brackets is mounted. To the rear is the bulkhead under the companionway, separating this bilge area from the area under the quarter-berth. I have not investigated those two black dots. Even after removing most of the water there is still a little here. I think the marking on the keel case are a waterline where the water had been sitting. I had drilled a hole in the sole between the bilge pumps, but until now I had no way to evacuate the area below that level.

The trouble with a destination - any destination, really - is that it interrupts The Journey.

Lee Panza
SR/SK #2134
San Francisco Bay
(Brisbane, CA)

Edited by - Lee Panza on 04/29/2018 11:02:02

Erik Cornelison
Navigator

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USA
194 Posts

Response Posted - 04/30/2018 : 07:25:11

Lee - great thread. How much water are you getting in there? I have some unused inspection ports for the kids Sunfish boats I never installed, I'm thinking now I should follow your example.

Erik Cornelison
6th Generation Professional Sailor, First Gen Submarine Sailor.
1986 Standard Rig SW. #5234

Leon Sisson
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
1889 Posts

Response Posted - 04/30/2018 : 09:12:33

Lee,

Thank you for the great photos and explanation shedding light on this often neglected area of our boats.

Soon after I got my 1979 swing keel w/dinette Catalina 25, I embarked on a bit of a refit. In exploring the darker recesses of the bilges (often with a disk grinder) I found that almost the entire bilge area under the hull liner is interconnected, interrupted mainly by the keel trunk and misc tabbing. (Tabbing refers to fiberglass attaching the liner to the hull in various spots accessible after installation through storage lockers.)

Given that the factory tabbing was sort of haphazardly applied, I didn't worry much about weakening things by cutting access and drainage holes through it. In many locations, I supplemented or replaced the original tabbing with my own using woven roving and epoxy resin.

Speaking of the structural implications of tabbing, consider how the downward force on the swing keel winch is transferred to the hull.

I too cut access holes through the cabin sole above both sides of the swing keel pivot. However, I didn't do as neat a job as your Beckson plates. My holes are rectangular, requiring little fitted hatch covers, which I'm sure I'll get around to finishing one of these years.

I found the shortest automatic bilge pump I could, and shoved it as far as I could under the cabin sole port side of the keel. I think even shorter pumps are now available, but the ones I found need a couple inches of standing water to come on automatically.

I installed PVC plumbing interconnecting some of the lockers separated by tabbing, with removable plugs which could help isolate a spill, such as spare oil, etc., or could connect compartments for removing water.

Another solution I've seen is a conveniently mounted, manually switched, positive displacement pump with a pickup hose leading to a remote strum box at the lowest point in the bilge. Given the high initial cost and manual operation of such pumps, it might make sense to use one or more Y-valves and hoses to dewater multiple low points using a single pump installation.

As for where Catalina 25 bilge water comes aboard to begin with, besides the obvious leaky deck hardware and exterior woodwork, I found my lower rudder gudgeon leaked only when motoring, due to stern wave waterline. Also, the original somewhat small cockpit scuppers were connected to to-hulls with short sections of garden hose. I haven't seen any evidence of leaks at the hull-deck seam, but that could vary a lot from one boat to another.

To check a suspected leak, make a line just downhill from it using sidewalk chalk.

-- Leon Sisson

� Leon Sisson

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