Adding a second bilge midship?

My first season of keeping our 1982 Bayliner Explorer in our slip in the Santa Cruz Harbor was largely a success. I pulled it out after 10 months of great fishing and family time in the water and gave it a good washing. The bottom paint held up wonderfully and the boat is generally in pretty solid condition.

My one big point of concern was that the boat seems to hold a decent amount of water below deck. We have a functioning bilge pump in the stern, but it seems as though water settles somewhere foreward. Unfortunately, I don't have an access hatch to get below the deck anywhere other than the engine cover.

I was planning to "just" cut a hole for a new access hatch somewhere midship in the deck, install another bilge pump, and then run a line back to the stern and out alongside the other pump (a second hole in the hull). Am I oversimplifying things here? Is this a dumb idea?