November 30, 2016
Early on in my boating life, I discovered why a high water alarm might be a good idea. I was on a friend’s boat, sailing (well, motorsailing) from San Diego to Catalina Island. It was an overnight trip and all was fine on board. The four of us were in the sitting in the cockpit late at night, talking and laughing when the engine quit. I went below to investigate and stepped into water – water about six inches above the floorboards.
We got busy with the emergency hand bilge pump and formed a bucket brigade. We made fast work of the water. The cause of the water, and the engine quitting: the prop shaft gland had started to leak when the packing material shredded and extruded from the gland, and the shredded packing plugged up the automatic bilge pump, and the high water actually floated the huge, metal fuel tank up and off it’s mounts, and the fuel feed line broke. No disaster, just a middle of the night, pitching and rolling boat repair project.
The point of this? If we’d had some warning that the water level was too high, we would have had smaller problems. The solution: a high water alarm.
I’ve carried this memory for years and while browsing through a home improvement store, found my solution. They make small, really inexpensive alarms designed to detect water heater leaks. (Yes, I’m sure there are alarms designed for boats, or for that matter, I could have used a bilge pump float-switch and an alarm buzzer, but you saw the “inexpensive” part above, right?)
This is what I used the first time, at less than $10 each, and they lasted about three years. I say “about” because I’m not sure how long it was actually functional during the last year. I change the battery anually and last time, I found that the battery wires had corroded off of the circuit board. A quick solder job and it was functional again.
To make these work on our boat, I soldered wires to the pc board to extend the sensor. I stripped the two loose ends of the wire and fastened them about 6 inches above the highest water level I ever expected to see.
I bought one like this to replace our original alarm. It has a remote sensor wire so no modifications are necessary. I bought this from Amazon as they are unheard of in NZ and Oz.
They run on a 9 volt transistor battery that lasts at least a full year. When activated, they sound a very loud alarm that would be hard to miss. No more worries about stepping down onto floating floorboards! We also use a bilge pump counter, but that was the subject of another post . -Rich
