Mysterious Leak...

[SnapperHunter28]

Ok so...me and a friend of mine, a fairly LARGE friend of mine were out fishing in my 15ft flats boat in the ocean, in about 65ft of water, catching fish, having a good time. Suddenly I notice my feet are wet !! I start looking around for a leak, can't figure anything out, but the bilge pump pumps out about 30 gallons of water, I am left scratching my head and wondering what the hell is going on here, I KNOW I put the plug in the boat, my buddy WATCHED me. So, now the boat is about as dry as its gonna get at the time, and we go back to fishing. About 30 minutes later, my feet are wet again! Now I'm not only mystified but aggervated . So we turn the bilge pump on and go back to fishing. About 30 minutes later again...MORE WATER...now i'm officially pissed off, cause there is somewhat slow leak SOMEWHERE in this boat, and I have NO clue where it is coming from. I had just redone the hull, the transom, and the rub rail. I KNOW there is no hole in the boat (hence why I wasn't concerned the first time we had 30 gallons of water in the boat). Now not only am I worried, but I'm pissed off, I start the motor up, cut the anchor line, and haul tail back to the ramp. Retreive the boat, and discover.....


Hold on to your seat....




keep holding...


It's coming...


My friend who weighed 300lbs was sitting in the passenger seat, which had a "vent" for some odd reason, and the vent kept going under the water. Turns out there was no real hole in the boat, or any problem for that matter, we just needed to plug that little vent. Needless to say, we went back out after plugging the Vent and had no issues from that point on.

 

[ufm82]

Re: Mysterious Leak...

How about this. In Florida several years ago we stay at a place that combines your room with the use of a boat. We get assigned to our boat and it's a nice 20' center console. Thinking we are good to go we load up and head out. One odd thing- the livewell is in the floor behind the leaning post. Strange place for that but oh well.

An hour into the trip we find water on the floor. Granted, self-bailing boats can get water on the floor and that's not unusual. But, an inch overall has us scratching our heads. We run the boat for a bit and it drains out. Then we anchor up and start fishing again. Here comes the water. Figuring we have a leak somewhere we head back to the dock. Bilge pump keeps kicking on and we hope we make it.

Get to the dock and almost by accident I notice water coming from under the livewell lid. I open the lid and water is coming up and out of the well. Apparently the precious user let several shrimp go down the drain line and clog it. The livewell pump is doing its best to flood the boat! A little work with coat hanger cleared it up and WA-LA- dry floor.