I have had a 98 370AC with 7.1L Merc's for 3 months. It has been a fresh water boat with good mechanical survey in Feb 07. I have put 30 hours on it with no problems (350 total hours). We just took it on a 5 hour cruise up the Sacramento Delta and after 3 1/2 hours of cruising at 9-10 kts the starboard engine alarm came on. Water temp. and OP were good, everyting seemed fine, however I had our inflatible dinghy on the extended swim platform and it had filled with quite a bit of water adding a lot of weight. :smt021
I removed the dinghy and all seemed well...no problems with the alarm. I think the added weight caused a back pressure in the exhaust as the alarm stopped once the dinghy was removed. My question, Could this cause the alarm?
I thought everything was fine, until our return trip...towing the dinghy. Now the bilge alarm went on, upon inspection there was a couple of inches of water in the well between both engines. Everything around the engines, sea cocks, sea strainers, hoses, manifolds, etc. were dry even with engines running. There are two Rule 2000 pumps however one pump did not seem to be working, I moved the float and could not get one to activate. This seems like a dumb question, however can pumps fail and allow water back into the boat? FYI, I cleaned the water and we had no other problems for the last hour, the bilge was dry once back at the slip. This casued more confusion as I do not know where the water came from.
Thank you in advance for helping with these "silly" questions.
Thanks,
Rich S.
I removed the dinghy and all seemed well...no problems with the alarm. I think the added weight caused a back pressure in the exhaust as the alarm stopped once the dinghy was removed. My question, Could this cause the alarm?
I thought everything was fine, until our return trip...towing the dinghy. Now the bilge alarm went on, upon inspection there was a couple of inches of water in the well between both engines. Everything around the engines, sea cocks, sea strainers, hoses, manifolds, etc. were dry even with engines running. There are two Rule 2000 pumps however one pump did not seem to be working, I moved the float and could not get one to activate. This seems like a dumb question, however can pumps fail and allow water back into the boat? FYI, I cleaned the water and we had no other problems for the last hour, the bilge was dry once back at the slip. This casued more confusion as I do not know where the water came from.
Thank you in advance for helping with these "silly" questions.
Thanks,
Rich S.