Well, I spent a quiet evening with my bilge pumps and hoses.

We’re working on replacing all the hoses and fittings. I’ve got almost everything done. The only remaining steps are to connect the last 6 inches from the Y to the through hull and to epoxy to the underside of the cockpit seat the nice wooden brackets Len made for mounting the new vented loops. Now, I know that it’s not optimal to have multiple bilge pump lines exiting through one through-hull, but this is still a significant improvement over the situation we’re remedying, which was that there was a direct downhill run to the high pump with no vented loop or check valve at all with 2 smaller lines branching off with check valves. The low pump first had to push the water through the severe constriction of the check valve, then repump the half of the water it had just pumped that ran back down the high pump’s line. With the new arrangement, there are no check valves, there are vented loops to prevent siphoning, and there will be no bilge water reflux. Plus we’re putting in nice smooth multiflex insted of that chintzy ribbed budget bilge hose. It’s gonna be great.

Oh, I did make another important discovery. All 3 scupper drain hoses are riddled with cracks. I even found a bead of water squeezing out of one. Terrifying right? Should be easy to replace them though…