If my boat is sinking should I bale or bail the water out?

From various literary examples it appears that I should manually 'bail' out the water to keep afloat but the automated water removal system in my vessel is a 'baling pump'.

While there is this, I cannot find any evidence that the present tense verb of 'to bail' is 'baling'.

'bale' may be an olde English of 'bail' but why would a factory keep producing 'baling pumps'? (see baling pump) ?

Solution 1:

The verb that means scooping water out of a boat is usually spelled "bail". However, the alternative spelling "bale" is also used by some writers. The "bale" spelling may be more common in the UK (the OED says bail is "Now often less correctly" spelled bale, who's etymology is an "erroneous spelling of bail"). The second spelling is not listed in all dictionaries (e.g. Merriam-Webster only has bail), so always using "bail" may be a safer pick, especially in the American English.

While either spelling is likely to be understood given a nautical context, a specific person is not likely to mix them together. If you use the base spelling "bail", then you should use "bailing" as the gerund form. If you prefer "bale", you'd use "baling". You should not write "bail" and "baling" together.

There are other verbs spelled "bail" (get somebody out of jail) and "bale" (form into a bale or bundle). If you're searching for uses of the first verb (referring to boats), you may find a lot of uses of these other verbs, so you should be careful in interpreting your results. Your search for "Baling pump" for instance, seems to turn up a lot of references to hydraulic pumps involved in "baling" machines which are used to create bales of things like straw or cardboard, not to pump water overboard on a boat.