I always read here but rarely post, so here's a little story for you. Yesterday we took out the boat for the first time after winter (Chesapeake Bay), dewinterized it, tested everything on the trailer first, went through all our check lists and had a great day. At the end of the day, as I was waiting in the boat by the dock for my wife to reverse the trailer down the ramp (she insisted..) I noticed the carpet was wet in the back, I first checked if a water bottle had perhaps spilled, didn't see anything, then I thought oh sh**, do we have a leak? (We did get stuck on a shallow bank earlier but no rocks so that was unlikely). Or a cracked block? I opened the engine hatch and water came pouring out of the block drain pipe, it had somehow come off, there was a ton of water in the bilge, it was also that moment that I realized that the bilge pump was shooting out gallons of water in the rear. I simply had not heard it over the engine noise. I don't know how long the bilge pump was already running, it then occurred to me that if we had not installed an automatic float switch last year, this could have been a debacle considering how far out we were on the bay. Basically the engine was pumping water into the bilge. I switched off the engine and let the bilge pump finish the job. Moral of the story I guess is, get a float switch if you don't already have one. And if you have a mercruiser make sure the drain pipes are connected properly and not damaged from the winter - that little "click" thing was apparently broken on mine, an $8 part with potential to ruin your day.
