Close Call almost put her on the bottom

[Liv2Fish]

Was togging off of Naushon Saturday. Didn't have ice with me so we were putting the keepers in the live well. Fished around the same rock pile for a couple of hours then moved to a different spot. Didn't notice any difference in the boat at that point. Fished another spot for another couple of hours. Went to power up to head home and noticed the boat was very sluggish. First thought was maybe we picked up something on a prop but no. Opened a deck hatch and saw every captains worst nightmare. The bilge was full to the deck with sea water and the float switch never activated the pumps.

My first thought was call in out location to the coast guard but after a quick check of the batteries (they're all above deck level and were not at risk), I decided to investigate for two minutes. I immediately closed both sea cocks, check the obvious, drain plug, hose connections at live wells, nothing out of place. I knew then it wasn't coming in on its own and the only other potential I could think of was live well pumps. I hit the manual dual bilge pumps switch and shut down and drained the live wells and she started to empty. After about a half hour, we were completely pumped out.

After a thorough inspection of the live wells, there is about a 1/8" gap around the top to the aft live well where it meets the deck and the live well was overflowing directly into the bilge for 4 hours.

Looking back:

I definitely should have immediately called in our position regardless.

I know better than to run the live well spigot at full blast and to balance it with the over flow capabilities but it never resulted in anything more then wet slimy decks on my old boat.

Before the first voyage, I tied up at the dock and tested every system on the boat, except for a real test of the float switches. This will be on the pre-season check list going forward.

I really think we could use a lessons learned or close call forum on here. I immediately remembered reading (I think it was JackK) the thread a couple years ago where someone sunk south of the vineyard and what actually sunk the boat was putting it in gear, shifting enough weight to the back allowing the engines to pull it under. All the things they described that they wish they thought of during the chaos went through my head. It's tough to consider and plan for all of the what if scenarios that could go wrong on the water. This was definitely one that I have rehearsed in my head many times and I think it went as I imagined but reading other's experiences definitely played in to my thoughts about what to do and what not to, So I'm sharing this in the hopes it will help someone in the future.