West Marine Manual Bilge Pump

This is a hand pump for pumping out the bilge of a small boat. I'm sure it is good for that purpose. However, what it does better than anything else I have ever tried is to pump off a sports field after a downpour. Many fields have no power access for electric pumps. With this hand pump you can dig a small hole, let the water drain into it and then pump it off quickly, into a bucket or just off the field, to help it dry. I travel around with this bilge pump during baseball season in eastern Massachusetts, and it has probably given my teams three or four games extra each year, by making inundated fields usable. It's not hard to work the pump -- in fact, I had my nine-year-olds pump it this year -- and the design is simple and industrial. It has a small crosshatch filter to keep material out of the mechanism and the outflow rate is pretty good if you pump it steadily.