I haven't made a pan, but one thing that REALLY works is to use a disposable baby diaper to adsorb the water. I use 2 Huggies under the front of my MD11C diesel engine (under Walter V-drive), and those things adsorb 5 times their initial volume of water, and trace oil. I find that if I change them out every 2-3 weeks, it keeps things very dry and clean. You can pick them up by a corner, and go straight to a trash bag. I keep a couple of packages of diapers to use as adsorbent when changing oil also.
Now...I have gone 6 weeks without changing the "baby", and the diapers adsorb so much water, they open up, and the polymer resin (beads) spill out. A mess, but it was easy to clean up, and nothing got into the main bilge. Now that I know the change frequency, I keep up with it.