Boat Emergency Repairs

The greatest single emergency any boat can face is loss of hull integrity, or a hole! This can come from collisions, striking containers discarded by ships at sea, or from large sea life. Consider the danger of a hole big enough to threaten sinking your boat. Even a small hole will let in some 80 gallons of water per minute. A boat engine driven pump handles between 100 to 450 gallons a minute, so that is the only way to stem the flow from a relatively small hole. For the moment we'll assume we have some chance of beating the water and doing hull repair.

First cut down the inflow by placing a cabin cushion or pillow over it, then wedge a piece of timber against the cushion, even if the timber has to go right through the hull. That should bring the flow down to the level of a leak and provide time to deal with the problem permanently through emergency hull repair. With timber vessels, the method of hull repair, if the hole can be reached, is to tack some pliable, thin plywood over the hole, with a sealant between the plywood and the outside of the hull. This type of emergency hull repair will make the flow of water almost stop.

Then, inside the hull the hole can be filled with epoxy and a tingle nailed to the hull from the inside. If the hole is further down the hull, depending on conditions, hull repair with quick sealing epoxy can be done to cover the hole in the same way, but it's more likely that the conditions will be difficult and the problems of the vessel might be compounded if someone were put over the side to handle the repair. These are a few ideas you can use to quickly recover from the unforeseen disaster of a hole in your boat.

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