I removed my forward floorboard a few weeks ago to clean underneath it and it was a solid fiberglass "floor pan". I didn't notice any bilge or bilge access. Maybe CY made a change after my hull number?

Ours is tied into the main bilge, looks like it came that way from the factory. Perhaps yours was overlooked or we got lucky? It doesn't get too gross since we flush and pump the main bilge fairly regularly.

I found the same bilge on my 92 while taking out the floor. Took out more than 25gallons of clean water. Turns out that the drain from that bilge to the main bilge had been glassed over at the factory. I installed a small bilge pump with and outo switch. This pump drains to the main bilge. This bilge probaably is being fed with water frm the mast. At any rate the fix works. I also cut a hatch out of the floor board so that I can check and servce the pump.

A MK I expert will have to comment on that series (which I suspect is identical to the Mk II), but the Mk II's forward bilge compartment is important: that is where your forwardmost keel bolt is located. You must have ready access to it, so no glassing it over.

There should be free passage of bilge water from the under the V-berth all the way back to the main bilge compartments. If that passage is glassed over, then it should be opened. I would try a small test hole, then once known for sure that the glassing over is not structural, and that the passage is indeed present, I would use a dremel to open it up. There should not be a need to install a separate bilge pump. Surely, if you look at the compartment immediately aft of the mast you can see a passage that leads forward???

I recently did a complete soap and water flush of my bilge, during which I photographed every compartment. I was/am going to write an article for our Maintenance library that shows all of these compartments. It's on my To-Do list, but my plate is quite full at present.

No question about what should have been done in original construction. No question also that the keel bolt should not be glassed over, not sure where that question came from. In my case the passage, which is plastic tube, is evident in the forward bilge but not in evidence in the main bilge at the juncture of the mast step block. No amount of fishing with various tools, wire, flexable drill bits and other things would reveal the exit or open it up. I am unwilling to go on a fishing expedition in the glass on the aft side of the mast step block in order to find the exit of this tube. A chat with tech support at Catalina suggested that it could have been glassed over during original construction. I am sure that there are other solutions to this issue, but in my case the little bilge pump does the trick.