It’s something all sailors dread—seeing the floorboards in the cabin sole afloat—and it’s what I saw on my way back from a sail across Biscayne Bay. Since I was on my own, I immediately let Betty Jane, my 1982 Mystic 20 Catboat, round up into the wind and went below to turn on the bilge pump. For some reason the automatic float switch had stopped working. I also got out the manual bilge pump and pumped away. Luckily, it wasn’t a massive leak, and a few minutes later the bilge was dry.
In hindsight, I think the excess water in the bilge was due to my running before the
