A25 cockpit self bailing?

[OldDemps]

Is the A25 cockpit self bailing or does rain/seaspray/washing water just end up in the bilge after leaking thru deck plates and have to be bailed out?

[hetek]

My A25 has no scuppers in the cockpit. Any rainwater in the cockpit would make it past the plywood floorboards and go straight into the hollow keel.

The A27FC does have cockpit scuppers (but I can't remember if it goes overboard or not. It's been a while...)

[tribologist]

I saw an ad earlier this year for a A25 fisherman without rear cabin and that was listed as self bailing. The regular A25 would be hard to make self bailing. Maybe if one made a fitted “Weather-tech” like tub for it? I need to come up with something to make ours more “fishable” but i was thinking getting some rubber backed carpets that can be rinsed off.

Ulf

[Mainer]

A27 Sport has self bailing scuppers, but the deck hatches leak pretty badly, and those with drain lines get clogged easily, so a heavy rain will leave considerable water in the bilge if you don't have automatic pump switch.

[OldDemps]

Where is the lowest spot in the A25 bilge for primary automatic bilge pump?

I dumped a 5 galllon bucket of water into A25 prop shaft / keel area to test manual bilge pump and was shocked when the water quickly disappeared somewhere.....into forward cabin sole via conduit under engine pan exiting at main cabin mid ship bulkhead which seemingly is the low point of bilge when berthed?

I was going to install auto bilge pump in cabin sole and two manual (1 electric / 1 manual) in keel below prop shaft.
Thoughts??

[WillieC]

It went forward. There are two access panels (which may under carpeting) in the galley/v-berth area. You'll find the water there.

I did pretty much the same thing you did and was amazed that the water disappeared. Now I was on the trailer that dropped the bow, so that made sense. If you are in the water, at rest you may be somewhat bow down, depending on how the boat is loaded, including fresh water supplies. It all works. The only place for a bilge pump pickup is where you have it. At least you know the tube under the engine pan is not clogged.

We have found that the water doesn't stay forward. That part of the bilge does not stay wet. Then again, we use our aft cabin for ship's stores. I built an extra level of shelves throughout with a closet rod for line drying and wet gear hanging in the center. We organized it thusly: Costco supplies, starboard...Wet Marine, port. (We hauled so much stuff....anybody need Idaho Spud Hash Brown Potatoes?) Two five gallon jerry cans of diesel and two gallons of denatured alcohol also went back there...hmm, extra anchor, rail mount grill... By the time we headed out from Blaine last summer, we clearly needed to adjust the waterline paint.

[stmbtwle]

As the cockpit already has drains, they could be plumbed to a sump with it's own pump, if you wanted to keep trash etc out of the bilge.
If the pump failed for any reason (trash) the sump would overflow and the bilge pump would take care of it. Hopefully the trash would stay in the sump.

I thought of plumbing the drains directly to a "bait pump", but I think it would probably become clogged in short order.