Bilge Pump for 23ft swing keel American Spirit

[thomasward00]

The boat is slipped right now, It will have a Deep Cycle 625CCA battery, can someone suggest a size and or model that I should be looking at.


Thanks in advance

[celenoglu]

If the boat is wet inside a small one with automatic switch and a big one that can only fit with diffficulty to be used in emergency.

[SlowButSteady]

People often think that a small boat only needs a small bilge pump. However, the exact same sized hole will sink a 23' boat a whole lot faster than it will a 32' boat (everything else being equal, of course). So, as celenoglu alluded to, the smart thing to do is to get a small bilge pump for the "everyday" drips and drops (maybe 500 gal/hr; with a float switch if you're gonna keep the boat in the water), and as big a pump as the boat will possibly accommodate for emergencies (maybe 2000-2500 gal/hr; manually activated). If you do keep the boat in the water, I would connect a cycle counter (clicky-clicky) to the small bilge pump's circuit to keep track of how much it's working while you're not around.

A manual diaphragm-type bilge pump is also a good idea as a back-up. But, a frightened sailor with a three gallon bucket can move a lot more water (for a while anyway) than just about any reasonably-sized/priced bilge pump on the market.