Plug? YES PLEASE!

[Planetwarmer]

Dont know if any of you have thought about taking your 22C out for a spin without the plug, but I highly recommend that you dont. I backed the boat in the water to reset it on the trailer, and didnt put the plug in. It was in the water for less than a minute. When I pulled the boat out, there was a stream of water flowing out of the hole past the drive for (no joke) 5 minutes! :nilly:

[hdsadey]

Ummmm yeah did that years and years ago with a little center console we had. It was longer than a minute, took us like 20 minutes of bilge pump to get the water out. Total brain fart!!!!!!!!!

[CHACHI]

DonziJon, mentioned to me years ago that it would take something like 9 minutes to sink his Minx.

Not much time to find and install a plug while the boat is in the water of God knows what depth when you realize the plug is out.

Ken

[DonziJon]

A few years ago I rented a Boston Whaler with a 50HP Merc on the back from Chic's Marina, next to the Algonquin restaurant in Bolton's Landing, Lake George.

The boat would NOT get on plane. Not to worry. Everybody knows a Boston Whaler is unsinkable. Trouble was, the space between the hull and cockpit shell was half full of water. :yes:

SO: If your Donzi seems to be sluggish and won't get on plane like it used to, it's REALLY Time to pop the hatch and take a look. :nilly: If you have only 100 gallons of water in there, (800#) it ain't likely you are going to get on plane....even if you have more horsepower than everyone else, cause all that water is gonna slosh right aft under the engine.

The theory goes, "A floating object displaces an amount of water equal to it's own weight". So if your boat weighs 2700#, ...and your boat takes on that much weight of water, then the boat is no longer "Displacing" the water because it's now inside the boat...so it sinks.

Even before you take that amount of water through the drain hole, your freeboard at some point around the hull will be such that a small wave or swell....or someone leaning in the wrong direction will finish the job. Bummer. :(


BTW: The ONLY way to put the plug back in the drain hole with the boat in the water, is to go swimming with the plug..because nobody has arms long enough to reach the drain hole while lying across the engine hatch of a Classic.

[gcarter]

I had a friend who, many years ago, rented a Sun Fish ???? on Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman.
He was having a good time sailing until he noticed the little boat was getting real sluggish and lost all its stability. That's when he discovered he had left the beach w/o the plug.
Well, the boat wasn't going to sink, but the current and the prevailing breezes were carrying him away from land.

Eventually, a boat happened by, picked him up, and towed the boat back to land. By that time, he was nearly five miles off shore w/nothing between him and Mexico. :eek:

[yeller]

Try doing that with a jetdrive and the access cover removed. That's a 4" hole. Didn't take long before I had water in the cockpit. :lifeprese:

[Cuda]

I was at the Home Town Rally in Sarasota, and there was a big block Minx tied up right next to my SBC. I noticed from the seventh floor the BBC didn't sit any lower than mine. The next morning when I raised the hatch, the water was just below the exhaust manifolds, and maybe an inch from where the bilge emptied. If the boat sunk one more inch, the water would have come in the bilge hole, and the boat would be resting on the bottom of Sarasota Bay.

I launched boats twice not putting the plug in. The Minx had a leak in the drive rubber.