Jerry,
You have approached the water problem from a different direction (literally) and I think you may have a reasonable solution with your bilge area drain hole. I think most of us have experienced unwanted water in the bilge and we have questioned where it came from. Some mysteries have not been solved. Some have found cracks in the outer hull, some cracks in the inner hull. If you keep your boat in the water, and the bilge accumulation is minor, your inside drain hole may just be the ticket. The "void", filled with foam, between the transom and the rear bilge wall is probably larger than you realize. The worst case scenario I see is if your bilge pump fails and you accumulate a large amount of water, it will fill into the foam void area and create quite a weight problem. That is if you leave the inside plug out of the hole while you are moored, which is the advantage of your design. Yours will work if the inner hull water accumulation exceeds the bilge accumulation. You must have more water in the inner to force it to exit into the bilge. If the bilge level exceeds the drain hole then it will fill into the inner hull.
That said, you need to be sure your bilge pump is fool proof. The Rule brand, with the internal float switch, is not fool proof, especially once the bilge gets an accumulation of fishy water from the fish box drains. The float will stick down and not rise with the water level. The pump does not activate and the bilge fills to the deck line or above. Someone steps on board, dislodges the float and the bilge then starts. I know it happened to me more than once. Others have also experienced this.
I replaced the factory bilge pump and switch with a new pump and seperate switch that has no moving parts to seize up. It is called a Water Witch and it works flawlessly all the time. See my post on the subject with photos.
If you do experiment with the inner bilge drain, let us know how it goes. You might be on to something there. If it fails, at least is should be an easy fix to plug the hole permanently.
Codfish
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