Elvstrom?

[BillyBudd]

Elvstrom, I guess the name is right, is the stainless steel port installed on a boat's bottom that, when opened, drains water from the moving boat's bottom. Right? Well, in my departed racing dinghy boat, that sort of device did a terrific job of removing water. It was one continuous and effective slurp. But in the current boat under construction, will it? The new boat, a 20-foot cat-yawl, will get--maybe?--up to 6 knots if God and wind and current and handler all agree and are all paying attention. Is this adequate speed for this device?

[JimConlin]

I'd guess that the performance of suction bailers would also be affected by the depth of the bailer below waterline. This is against this application, too.
I haven't seen one used on small keel boats like J24's. Anybody else?

[Gerrywood]

These self bailers work well on a dinghy. Even at slow speed say 3 to 4 knots a "super suck" will work.However, the bailer must be on the bottom of the hull and only about 1 to 3 inches draft. Any deeper and the back pressure will prevent the suction required especially on non planning craft.So probably best off with a manual hand bilge pump.

[BillyBudd]

Ahhh. Many thanks!

[Lucky Luke]

Not right at the deepest point, but a little aft of it, where the water starts making a depression below the hull. Bailers are commonly fitted on "Star" series (keelers - fast boats!), but not pushed down since the speed is about 5-6 Knots. Slower: hand bilge pump; yep! ;)

[paladin]

...or a nice cedar bucket.....

[Ian McColgin]

Assuming this is not a deep keel boat, but a more or less flat bottomed centerboarder.

Try locating one on each side a bit abaft the maximum beam - wherever the water puddles most deeply when you're beating in a good breeze. With luck, this will be above or at about the normal load waterline, so the bailers will be high when the boat is level, and the leeward (working) bailer will not be immersed too deeply.

I don't know your design, but if the boat is really flat bottomed, put the bailers in the garboard, not the very bottom. Analogous position if 'round bottomed' but really canoe section where the deadrise off the keel is really flat - get the bailer up over the turn of the bilge.

G'luck

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

My old Firefly has a pre-Elvstrom design; bronze tubes with a forward facing hole at the top and an aft-facing hole at the bottom. Rather a nice old fitting.

[bainbridgeisland]

Wooden Mercury designs used to have them mounted just below and inboard of the chine log. This seemed to work for them. A Mercury is a keelboat about 19 feet long, though I do not remember the true length.

[BillyBudd]

My boat, marvelously and surely miraculously under progressive construction at Billy Budd's Backyard Barn Boatyard (or BBBBB, or....), is a Chebacco (20'x7.5'xcat(gaff)-yawl(sprit mizzen)) by Phil Bolger and he shows on his wonderfully detailed drawings that she'll be drawing about 6 inches. I assume this depth (based on the previous emails) to be too much for the Elvstrom and thus I must build (at the 5B Works --yet another possible corporate name with major symbolic potential (oh!) for this place of wandering shavings and empty epoxy jugs, such as it is with the bare-backed chickens, the grazing sheep, the philosophically happy cat, and more than a few fattened mice) one of those upward and then sideward sloshing bilge pumps. For this (see previous WB mag)I assume that I'll be losing a shoe or two for the leather parts. Since dearest wife deposited my left shoe into the garbage bin last year without consultation I'm fairly sure that right shoe is available. A very aged, most venerable LLBean sort, a soft tie-up loafer derivative with credible evidence of boatbuilding thrills such as: scars from dropped chisels and planes, Kirby white paint dribbles, epoxy blobs and of course a flopping sole.

Is there no other way?

[Lucky Luke]

Originally posted by paladin:
...or a nice cedar bucket.....:D