A few questions regarding Ariels -- what's level -- depth sounders.

[ebb]

Hey Ken,
You have to make some assumptions, but unless someone sez I'm wrong here are a few of the things I discovered.

The cabin sole is level in 338.
The settees in 338 were level foreandaft and as well side to side. They are perhaps the best datum and easiest to work with.
A designer will have many waterline level planes in his accommodation drawing. In manufacturing things change. In reality you have to get lucky. Hopefully your boat was put together on a sober day.

Vberths in 338 are not level but they may relate across the aisle. In 338 they slope aft toward the main bulkhead. I also noticed that the setees and the Vberths tilt downward slightly toward the aisle. Nice. When the boat is sitting quiet liquid should drain off flat surfaces into the bilge rather than stay at the hull.

Bulkheads should be square across and be at right angles to a center line. Setting up an actual centerline, if you are major remodeling, gives you a line to measure from. EG a string from the center of the bow (easy) to the center of the companionway should be pretty good.


The bridge deck is level across. Or across the the seats.
When you are setting up the boat on jacks,
being in the cockpit with a carpenter's level is the way to go.

I have used the foreandaft of the cockpit seats as waterline level. Use a long level and open the seat lids which are sometimes misaligned.

The cockpit sole is NOT level. It slopes forward to the corner drains.
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If your cockpit drains are original they go to straight-thru glassed in fiberglass pipe without the benefit of seacocks. I'm on record as being OK with this but there has to be modifications.
I think it is asking for trouble to connect the open pipes and the cockpit drains with any kind of normal hose.
The open pipe drains should be erased and seacocks installed - if you stay with the original drains. The problem with this is that you end up with short hose and the seacocks at crazy angles.

I'm the guy that erased the factory drains and went with glass epoxy gas pipe to exit just above the waterline under the counter. That means there is pipe running the length of the cockpit just under the cockpit deck at a slight downward angle. A fairly long run. I put in two more straight down in the aft corners of the cockpit.
The four pipes are heavily glassed to the hull without thru-hulls and seacocks. I won't recommend this method. Main reason is that if they leak or get broke they are just about not accessible. BUT 338 now has NO cockpit drains that are always under water!

I have not had the boat in the water yet. Ariels are known to squat, I believe especially if you run an OB. Also on certain points of sailing, particularly when heeling. It is possible that sea water could find its way up the tubes and into the cockpit.

I will wait and see on this. The idea was to radically increase the drain capacity (now at a decent 13 square inches), as the cockpit could hold 100s of pounds of water if boarded by a wave. There are a few oneway stoppers in the market that could be used but they would decrease the diameter of the drains.
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I have the same problem finding stuff with the search mode. It needs to be more intuitive. I think we're spoiled by google. But even google can be a royal PITA.