A Little Mystery: solved

[Peter]

Sometimes it is the little things that drive you crazy. When that hapens sometimes solving the little problems are the most rewarding.

For years now…. really since I took stewardship of my 26 Bert, occasionally, and not every time, there would be water on the saloon sole after a rainstorm.

I’d mop it up and look for the source of the deck leak every time. I traced it up to the floorboards at the inside the helm, from there to the electrical locker…. From there a little higher up, but where? In that location it could be a number of things. The windshield, the side window frames, the hull-deck joint…. There was a breast cleat in the area, and a waste pump-out deck fitting, and a couple of bow rail stanchions…. All were suspect.

I tried to eliminate each one methodically and in turn. I used all kinds of tricks to see if I could locate the source, and everything came up negative. Everything except the puddle that would occasionally appear. This went on literally for years, season after season. The damn leak was driving me crazy. Nothing is more annoying than a tricky puzzle of a problem, except one that is also intermittent! I tried to tell myself it wasn’t a significant problem, but who was I kidding? I couldn’t really ignore it, and the longer it continued the more I became concerned about water stains, mold, rot, etc. I was getting crazy.

Finally the other day I traced the line of the trickle after a rain storm. Once again for I had to all but crawl into the teeny electrical cabinet behind the helm to do it, but for the first time I was able to definitely determine that the water was coming from further forward and running aft along the hull liner that makes the bunks in the forepeak as well as the rest of the deck system in the boat.

You see the 26 was a modular boat design. There is a one piece outer hull. Next was a monolithic drop in liner that formed the cockpit sole, saloon deck, forepeak bunks etc. All from one big drop in unit. Then the weather deck, cap boards etc were another unit. From there the hard top was an adder, and the fly bridge atop that if you wanted one. Actually it is a pretty well thought out design from a production stand point. Well the drop in cockpit sole part has a joint that runs the length of the hull. It was obvious from the beginning that the water was traveling along this joint. But each time I investigated it looked as though it was only from about the electrical locker aftward. Naturally I looked for the leak at here or only slightly further forward of this point.

Then the other day the puddle appeared. Like I had done hundreds of times before I wiped it up and searched for clues. No luck.

The next day after an unusually clear and dry night I went down to the boat and there was the darn puddle again. WTF? No rain. Way to much water to be from condensation….Where had it come from?

Obviously there was a place somewhere where the water collected and then slowly made its way to the cockpit floor…. Which explained in some measure the intermittent nature of the thing. It probably leaked every time, but water didn’t appear until a long while later. Like 24 hours or more later. So if I looked right after the rain, I didn’t find water. But if I looked 12 to 24 hours after the rain….. there it was.

So I started to think about where water could collect in a pool, and then find its way to the zone where I found it. Also I have a couple of years stewardship in with my boat now and I have a more intimate understanding of its nuances of construction, which helps me to form a mental picture of what is going on where I cannot see. I mused on it and nothing made sense. Nothing was obvious…. So as Sherlock Holmes once said “When you have exhausted the obvious it must be the improbable.”

One place that was improbable but might be a source of the leak was the chain locker forward. If it leaked it could get to the liner module, run along that joint with the hull, and the water would appear in my electrical locker. What was very improbable about this scenario was that the ceiling in the forepeak was never wet. It required that he water would run just behind the ceiling for about 6 feet but never actually get it wet. This would be impossible except for two very minor details.

One: the joint was tilted outboard. Thus the water would stay contained in the joint like a gutter as it ran aft. And two, the ceiling is made of that 70’s shag carpet (I’ve really got to change that one of these days) and it only fits into that joint area with a radius. Like I said, an improbable situation, but all other explanations had failed.

I pulled all the rode out of the chain locker and got my flashlight and inspection mirror to take a look. The floor of the chain locker is like a little triangle about a foot on each side, give or take. At the apex at the stem there is about a ¾ inch drain hole. That leads to the bilge. It bypasses the deck-liner module which doesn’t quite make it all the way to the very stem, stopping only about 2 inches shy. But someone had added another drain hole about 5/8 in diameter, and this was at the aft-starboard corner. THIS hole drained directly on top of the aforementioned suspect joint.

It was a natural enough mistake. Who thinks of water as draining forward in a boat? So I am sure some well meaning individual thought he was doing the right thing by adding a drain hole at the aft end. I used a small diameter cylinder to prove to myself that indeed Bertram had installed that little triangle of deck such that it drained forward to the front hole. The cylinder always rolled forward…. and from there the water would go down the drain to the bilge, where it would run the full length of the boat to the bilge pump.

The aft hole never should have been there. It was a mistake made by the driller to correct what he thought was a mistake made by Bertram. But Bertram hadn't made a mistake. The way that boat is built the drain had to be at the stem, not at the aft end of teh chain locker.

I plugged the aft hole. Problem solved..... Big smile!

Peter

[Keith Poe]

Glad you found the problem Peter

When I'm looking for leaks on decks windows roofs i use a hose or sprinkler to find the problem.


Keith

[Carl]

That is exactly the reason I try not to let things like that bother me...I'd rip the boat apart to fix.

Me...a small drill hole where the water puddles...What leak?



Intermittent problems....hate them!

Good call...sure you'll be sleeping easier.

[mike ohlstein]

Me...a small drill hole where the water puddles...What leak?

Exactly.

[Bruce]

I grew up on wood boats. As a young lad I asked my dad why there was a constant supply of water in the bilge.
He replied, son its a boat. Its life is in water, around water and gets bathed by water. Boats and water are two peas in a pod, get over it.

I did.

[Carl]

I got a bud that vacuums his bilge dry...I'll help with just about anything.
Find a drip, lost piece of hardware in the bilge, barnacles on running gear, I'll jump in and scrape'm off without hesitation...
But when that vacuum comes out, I grab a beer and find myself a seat.

[Harry Babb]

A guy lived across the river from my boat house several years ago. He owned a very nice 20' Runabout. Everytime he took the boat out....if it was only for a short river cruise.....he hand wiped the entire boat....yes the entire boat bottom and all....with a Chamois then put a cover on it until the next cruise.

I, on the other hand, use my boats and just hose them off when I get back to the dock.....and let them drip dry.....

River scum around the water line is just part of boating...

One day we were sitting on the dock having a cool one and I complimented him on how good his boat looked.....he replied with the statement "I wish I could be like you and not really give a shit".......I laughed outloud.....different strokes for different folks


hb

[MarkS]

Harry, poor choice of words by your neighbor. Of course you give a shit! just not about that!!!

[Carl]

First time I went commercial fishing for bass in New York Harbor was on Sonny's boat...25' center console with SS pipe's encasing the hull and running gear, had a little 4cylinder diesel that just chugged us along at 18 knots along...nothing quite like hitting telephone poles at speed...at night...
Ooops, I'll stop reminiscing and back to the point. 1st night coming home after dropping load off at Fulton market...crew says its time to clean the boat...Sonny slows to idle...two guys go up front grab buckets, plunge into water and toss onto deck everyone shuffles their feet around abit...another bucket of water is tossed onto the deck and its back up to speed. I'm still asking for the brush and soap and they are saying were done.

[Keith Poe]

Nothing like a dark color to hid the dirt just a quick rinse and great for reducing light reflection at night with 3000 watts of light on deck.