I hadn’t been down to the boat since we’d sailed over for lunch, so we stopped by today to drop some stuff off and to check it out. When I opened the hatch, I was met with about 4 inches of water on the cabin floor! We had a pretty nasty storm last week, and 32 year old boats will leak (from the top!). In fact, I do know that one of windows leaks pretty badly in bad storms. And I’ve come in to find the cushions in the aft of the boat wet after a good rain.

I checked the battery. I had left the charger on and it was fully charged. I checked the bilge pump, and started fine with the manual switch. I checked the fuse and it hadn’t blown. So I guessed that the floater switch had died, since that had been acting funky when Steve N had replaced the hose for me.

So I turned on the bilge pump and emptied out the cabin, as well as the bilge itself. Then, when we got home, I IM’d Dan. He felt that my diagnosis was right. He also suggested getting a Water Witch Bilge Pump Switch. He said they were more reliable than the floater switches. I ordered one from Defender, since things tend to get her pretty quickly from them.