Story About Boat Capsizing in GOM off LA from Coast Cuard

And yet another story of a boat going bottom up because of a shitty thru-hull.

Capt had the sense to delay his trip to replace a failed VHF and it possibly saved his arse and definitely sped the recovery significantly.

Glad to see a happy ending here. Lots of lessons to be learned. He did more right than most would have and still lost the lottery that day.

Like a few of the 2cool guys said, I know the guy was excited, but I probably would've had the boat in the bays and/or near offshore a few times to make sure everything was good to go before running way out to go fishing. He was def more prepared than most and even then his preparation and preplanning in case of any issues didn't go quite as he thought or hoped it would.

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I probably would've had the boat in the bays and/or near offshore a few times to make sure everything was good to go before running way out to go fishing

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agree. think I'd have stayed closer to shore too if I had the kids on board for the maiden voyage.
lucky family.

yes. sleep on boat. fish a rig usually. do it overnight.

I spent many nights sleeping in my V-21 in the late 80s-90's in 3 feet of water while fishing oilfield bullred tournaments. Mine had a closed transom, not open. That boat had to be modified to run dual engines. Maybe he had a transom failure.

Question:

Fortunately I don't have any real experience with boats taking on water. So I'm asking out of ignorance.

Why do you think that the bilge didn't drain when the guy tried to "run the water out" (while both engines were operable) - and had two bilge pumps running? Maybe the hull of that boat is a lot deeper in the water, so there's greater hydraulic pressure pushing water in ?

Back when I had bateaus, it was easy to run water out.

The one time I lost a drain plug (18 ft. fiberglass boat - trolled over a stump and drain plug got pulled out). But my bilge pump kept up with the leak.

Good read but kind of hits home. I have a V20. I don't go offshore with it. I use it in and around Ponchartrain. I think it's capable of running in the Gulf but I know not to push it to it's limits.

Could have been an engine bracket that compromised the transom? Those old boats were wood cored. If that transom wasn't rebuilt or wasn't done right, I can see that causing a big problem.

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Some boats have the pickups through the bottom of the hull rather than through the transom and that may be the case here as well.

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Never considered that.

Still, with two high capacity bilge pumps (the boat owner seemed to be the type to plan for every contingency, so I'd presume he installed good pumps), it would take a high rate of inflow to exceed what two pumps could remove.

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Never considered that.

Still, with two high capacity bilge pumps (the boat owner seemed to be the type to plan for every contingency, so I'd presume he installed good pumps), it would take a high rate of inflow to exceed what two pumps could remove.

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A two inch hole one foot below sea level will allow about 20 gallons of water to pass in a minute without any obstruction....so lets say you lost, in its entirety a 1 inch thru hull fail completely, you'd have 1200 gallons of water aboard in an hour at about 8 1/2 pounds per gallons. If you had a 1000 GPH bilge pump working in laboratory conditions...a boat at sea with typical wiring systems is far from a laboratory...you'd have 160 pounds of extra weight in the hull...of course its an exponential function so as the hole gets further below sea level the faster it floods.

The article mentions one engine quits. May have been a function of taking on water....if it is then water was most likely coming over the transom at way more than that which would have resulted from a bunch of busted thru hulls.....boat was probably pretty low at the stern and there weren't enough bodies to redistribute enough weight to the bow to lift the stern of a hull that style and configuration. Just bad luck all the way around.


Blige pumps are design tested in a laboratory....the individual pumps built to that design may or may not perform as advertised....but they for certain ain't going to perform as advertised in an actual marine environment. Lose connections, leaking hoses allowing head pressure to drop, debris, bilge water being thick with oils and blood and all sorts of trash and a 1500 GP bilge pump working as hard as it can work may, with some luck, remove about 70% of that in a actual boating environment...let that thing run for a while, the batteries start to drain and the water temps get above about 70 degrees and that pump won't remove half its rated capacity even in the best of circumstances. Anyone who has ever built a bait tank with a bilge pump tossed over the side with a hose and a drain tossed over the side with another hose will attest to this....