[red herring]

all great info, Now here's another related issue maybe someone can comment on. Fishing at anchor in my '06 215, live well full and happy and running (until it got clogged - more on that in a minute). Anyway, after an hour or two, I'm standing in water in the back of the boat! Bilge is not full of water but the fish box that I was standing on most of that time was full! What the heck. . .? So I bail out the fishbox, get on my hands and knees to find out where this water has come from. Apparently, the weight of the water in the live well plus me at 180 lbs was enough to depress the stern of the boat just enough so that the water line was just above the level of the the ping pong valves and little flapper valve do-dads and the water backed into the boat through the channels in the floor and over to where I was standing and then seeped into that fishbox at the hinge where there is no gasket coverage! Every time the boat lurched, water dribbled into the fish box from the floor channel. I din't notice it because only when the fish box became full did water start to accumulate on the deck proper.

It seems hard to believe that the livewell and one person's weight is enough to cause this engineering shortcoming? I sure hope not - I hope that something else is going on (otherwise reminds me of a car I had once years ago where you had to unbolt the engine mounts and jack the engine up a couple of inches in order to change out two of the spark plugs!! Doh!

As to the happy livewell, later on - not so happy. seaweed invaded and clogged up the pump at the impeller. Upon inspection, there is no screen on the hull protecting the through hull fitting from sucking up debris - it is just wide open. This normal?

Thanks for your input.