Bilge pump repair

I almost forgot about the manual bilge pump repair, it was done between test sails 1 and 2. I was at a party before Christmas and got talking about the Teria with Tony, when i mentioned that the bilge pump probably wasn't working (but we did have a bucket and big sponge) he looked at me aghast and said " you had better fix that soon!".

So one day I had a look at it. The pump is a whale gusher hand pump which is located at the aft end of the starboard quarter locker. An intake hose went down to the yachts bilge-sump below the companionway step. The outlet hose exited from a transom fitting.

Starboard locker with bilge pump. Porta-poti can stow here for day sails but now it's kept at the aft end clear of the pump handle.

Our garden hose got plenty of water into the bilge sump but nothing happened when the pump handle was moved, no suction or water flow. So everything was removed from the locker and the pump was unbolted from the bulkhead.

Whale pump. Intake and elbow on lower left, the outlet goes to the right.

A 90 degree angle in the intake hose was occupied by a very rusty galvanized pipe fitting that shouldn't be in the saltiest parts of a boat in the first place, so removed it and replaced it with a  25 mm low pressure plastic angle from the hardware store for $1.50.

The pump still wouldn't work so my 8 y.o. daughter and i pulled the pump body apart. We found allot of debris under the valve seats, so cleaned it and reassembled. The pump worked well in the kids pool test. So it went back into position in the boat, we put the bolts back in - It's a 2 person job one for the inside nuts and another for the outside bolts. It worked a few pumps then stopped again, so open the pump on the bulkhead and same thing, full of debris which must have come from the sump.

The sump was full of black muck and debris which was getting sucked up.  I don't think anyone had cleaned out  the sump for a very long time. So this was cleaned out though-roughly. Then the intakes hose was cut off at 45 degrees on the end so it wouldn't suck stuff up as easily.  It wasn't long before the pump was moving garden hose water out as fast as it came in. 

Job done for now, but may have to get a strainer cage on the intake.