Anderson Autobailers - Should I fit?

I hadn't the time or resources to fix things earlier as I am not at home, but staying with relatives out of town.
Someone has been messing with the setup and I haven't been able to find out who.
Have all of you who use gmail, hotmail etc. accounts taken the advice and changed your e-mail passwords?
I fear that a bona-fide member's account may have been captured.
Shall we admins try to gather the messages posted here, or will you, Martin and David, delete and re-organize them (cut and paste to a text file and paste back into one or two relevant messages?)
Cheers,
Gernot H.

I haven't been able to determine who was at fault but have had to block a whole range of Chinese and several Ukranian and Russian IP addresses because the operators have been attempting to tamper with our system.
I have been out in fairly rough conditions (upwind in force 4 gusting to 7*) and the amount of water on board was not severe. Self-bailers would have been useless with boat heeled over for most of the trip anyway. Same applies to the boat after a capsize** (bailed out the remnants manually within minutes), but that was in a squall with the wind blowing offshore, so the water was relatively smooth. I suppose if you go over in a chop, you may profit from having a self-bailer. If my boat had the holes already cut, I'd have installed them.
I believe you sail with a "crew", Martin? Then you won't have to sit on the cockpit floor as often as I do. Self-bailers can make that more uncomfortable because they're there and because I've never seen any that don't leak a drop or two, which means a damp or wet posterior in the summer when one is out in shorts and T-shirt. Of course if you've waterproof gear on, that is not an issue.
Cheers,
Gernot H.

* (about 7:55 into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITt8cvMxXEY )
** (just after I disappeared behind the reeds, 52 seconds into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68xqAmDMR1c )

There are arguments for and against them, so it depends on how you plan to sail. If you're climbing in from a jetty and sailing in conditions where you know water won't splash in over the side, you might want to be able to keep the floor dry as Gernot says, though an alternative to that would be to put a bit of raised flooring into the boat for those occasions (perhaps shaped as a comfortable seat). As I have always launched by wading in with the boat, the floor has always been wet anyway, so I've never noticed any leaking from the self-bailers, though there has doubtless been some.

If a boat is used for racing, not having self-bailers is not really an option. They allow you to forget about bailing altogether and concentrate on hiking over the side the whole time. Even if you aren't racing, if you're taking a lot of water in over the side, you don't want to have to keep stopping to bail, and if you press on without getting the water out it will put aditional stress on the hull which can do damage to it - I've written off an old hull that way when by mistake the self-bailer hadn't been put down and we pressed on on the basis that we'd lose less time by completing the leg and bailing on the following run. The seams started splitting and all the buoyancy tanks gradually filled up. We abandoned the race and returned to harbour with the hull almost completely under water.

Self-bailers work fine in wild conditions, just so long as you sail the boat upright. It's better to spill wind than to lean over as the boat will go faster when sailed level and respond better to the rudder. Leaning over all the time also puts great stress on the rudder. Then again though, it's a lot quieter if you don't spill wind and just let the boat lean far over, and it will likely stop a lot of water coming in from the windward side, so however much it might be frowned on by racers, it is not necessarily wrong to sail that way (just so long as your rudder doesn't break off).

I don't know anything about different makes of self-bailer and which might be better than others, but I do know that if you fit bigger ones in the hope that they'll bail faster, you end up with them not working at all in anything less than a gale, so stick to the conventional size for a Mirror (there's a reason why two small ones are normally used instead of just one big one).

When I was camping aboard at Holy Island on the NE Coast of England, another dinghy anchored near me capsized in the night! His self bailers were leaking and slowly let water in, which unbalanced the boat. I use solid floors without self bailers and have a Whale manual bilge pump and a Rule 500 gallon per hour battery one, and these work really well.

earlier this year I offered to check a Mirror for leaks etc. for someone who wanted to sell his boat that had sat in a garage for some years.
We had trouble pushing her off the trolley and then water started flowing in. I'd forgotten to close the bailers (not having any in my boat) and bumped them on the trolley.
Fortunatel for the amusement of the general public, a camera was running at the time: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzlkMhyb0oA

Cheers,
Gernot

I started a thread on this subject a while ago. We do not offer web space, but if you have posted the picture or uploaded it to Facebook, Picasa or another service, you can display it here by using the URL of the photo in an tag.
See http://forum.mirrordiscussforum.org/node/35 .
Looking forward to seeing progress reports!
Genot H.

This picture of Martins's boat was added as described in my instructions using the "< img .... tag:

I'll try without admin permissions next.
Cheers, Gernot

This is Martin's other picture.
BTW I shall invite you to join the Facebook group, too, Martin.

Cheers, Gernot H.

Hi Martin,
I'd remove the sags carefully with a spatula and hot-air gun (apply just enough heat to soften the sags), scrape off the excess. Single-component Top-Lac should normally dry/set within 24 hours and allow sandpapering after two days at the very latest. Of course you'll have to sand down the spots where you removed the snots/sags before applying another coat. I found two thinly-applied coats to be adequate to achieve a nice glossy finish. I did not dilute the paint in any way and used fairly stiff, good-quality brushes. See my picture in response to your post on Facebook: