In January we had an unprecedented week-long freeze in the Lowcountry. Obviously this is not the norm for the Lowcountry of SC and most of us don’t typically “winterize” our boats. One day into the freeze I thought it might be best to crawl under my cover on my center console and make sure there was no water sitting in the bilge or anywhere else that it could cause problems. There was less than an inch of rain water in the bottom of the boat and it was already frozen solid. Outside of it being in contact with the bilge pump‘s I really could not see where this could cause any harm as the ice had plenty of room to expand. I also thought it might be best to open up the seacock and drain any water that was in the lines going to the bait well pump and salt water wash down pump. To my surprise this water, even though it was salt water, had already frozen solid. I could also tell there was some water trapped upstream of both pumps and there was no way drain this water without removing all of the hoses. Considering this is semi flexible reinforced rubber hose I really thought it would be fine even with the frozen water.
After the storm I crawled back underneath the cover and inspected the lines and everything appeared to be OK. This past weekend I pulled the cover off to perform some maintenance. With the cover off I reinspected the plumbing and noticed one of the lines was cracked. A lot of the other lines are difficult to inspect as they are pretty far down in the bilge. I decided to remove the bait well line right where it discharges to the well and install a garden hose connection. I was then able to hook my garden hose to it and with city water pressurize the entire system all the way back to the closed seacock.
This quick test revealed two more leaks including another split hose and one cracked fitting. Had I not pressurize the system I would not have been able to catch these problems until I actually had the boat in the water. Failure to inspect and test these prior to use could have be catastrophic. You