[quote=MrEZgoin]

We've been getting some water in the port engine bilge, and it seems like the float switch is not activating the bilge pump, though the pump will run manually. The warning beeps at the helm increasing in frequency did not make the trip more relaxing and had me visually checking the engine compartment to make sure we weren't suddenly taking on a lot of water. Eventually, I shut down the port to quiet the alarm.

/quote]


Curious as to what alarm was going off? Was it the bilge pump or the sail drive? We were just on our Leopard 40 sailing Martinique, St. Lucia and the Grenadines and had a similar issue although our port engine bilge bump wouldn't stop going off. Typically when this happens it is because the float is stuck up and you can just unstick the float. That wasn't the case this time and since we were already having battery issues (I can PM you all that craziness if you want.) I didn't want the pump to drain the battery nor did I want it to burn out. We ended up pulling out the fuse for the pump to get it to stop. The next morning we got underway and once we got into heavy seas, the port sail drive alarm went off. I know this isn't good so we quickly opened up the engine hatch and noticed there was a little water in there. I wasn't too concerned about the water because I had had a mechanic friend look at the engine (for a different issue) the day before and had told him that we seemed to get just a little water in there everyday. He checked things and determined that there was a small leak in the outdoor shower that was causing it. We pushed the fuse back in, pumped out the little bit of water in the bilge and then checked the sail drive oil to see if we did in fact have water in the sail drive. The oil was clear as it should be...not the consistency of mayonnaise, so we determined that the sensor must have gotten wet with the sloshing of water and the alarm would eventually go off. Well it didn't! We had to listen to that stupid alarm for a good chunk of the day because we were motoring north in the lee of St. Vincent.