My 3867 Santego does not have high water alarms, something we found out by surprise on her inaugural voyage from Belleville to Port Credit. Thankfully the leaking heat exchanger did not overwhem the bilge pump in the engine compartment and we made it home nonetheless.

However, this experience did not particularly sit well with me; had I not opened the engine baycover on a whim, the engines could have well been underwater without warning.

Then this season I found the engine bay float switch blocked with a hose and then found the miships pump NFG, I decided that something needed to be done.

The system that I am working on now will:
- have all new parts
- use electronically operated switches to detect water (no jamming, no failure due to moving parts)
- monitor pump cycles for each pump (I want to know if pump cycles are status quo or getting more frequent, signalling an issue)
- allow for auto/manual/off operation
- sound an alarm for high water condition (pump runs for more than N minutes)
- allow future tie-in to NMEA or SignalK onboard networks
- are correctly fused/breakered

Stay tuned...