I've been slowly outfitting my O'day 25 for extended cruising, and to make her generally more comfortable. When I bought the boat the water tank was not connected. Now that I'm finally putting it back together I want a foot pump of sorts, but have nowhere to put it. Somewhere I got the idea of mounting one in the face of the counter at knee height for operating with the same. I'm thinking whale's flush mounted "tiptoe" pump will work well. It's designed to be mounted in the cabin sole, but the folks at whale say it should work alright mounted horizontally. Anyone have any thoughts?
It will definitely improve your balance! I spill plenty of water out of my pots/cups even when I have both feet on the sole. I wonder how hard the Tiptoe pump would be to actuate with your knee. We have a Whale Gusher foot pump that's very easy to pump standing up with one's body weight helping, but surprisingly hard to pump with one's hand or other body parts. That said, it looks like the Gusher pumps 4gal/min and the Tiptoe 2gal/min, so maybe it's twice as easy per stroke.
Interesting idea, I have a tiptoe Mk3 which is/was installed inside a cabinet-style locker (bilges too shallow to allow a normal installation) and am wanting to improve the location. I must say that the spring on mine, at least, is surprisingly strong. I'll plan on checking out whether it feels at all "knee-operable" when I work on my boat on Wednesday, and will report back
Clamped the board mine is mounted on in a position at knee level - actuating the pump was easy and no more awkward than using this type normally (rocking leg forward and back, resting on toes and applying pressure with knee versus rocking leg forward and back while resting on heel and applying pressure with toes). Unless you have a knee injury this could be a workable way to mount the pump, and one that I will be looking at more when I am at that point in fixing up my boat. The new tiptoe pumps ought to be better suited for knee operation as well, as the "button" where pressure is applied looks to be at least 2" across as opposed to 1" across for my old version.