That is a great way to find a leak. Although I fixed the leak over the nav table I found a wet spot on my starboard cushion after a moonsoon type rain storm so I am going to use your colored water method on my windows to see if I have a leak there or like you in a stantion some where. Thanks for sharing a great no nonesense/comon sense solution, as you pointed out.... when its simple its simple, when its not use comon sense thought to come up with creatively simple ways to find and fix a hidden problem.
Drip over Nav Station
- Thread starter Jongleur
- Start date
I'm joining this conversation late, but have a few thoughts that I hope might be useful.
My '82 suffers from the same set of problems as you all do. The light above the Nav Station has leaked significantly in the past (prior to me getting the boat). I knew the PO well, and he did NOTHING to stop it, but that leak has not dripped for the past 4 or 5 years. Who knows what changed, but the leak had certainly been active for many years. The light fixture was completely rusted out.
My windows also leak...in a few places. I had originally assumed the water was coming in from the outside of the frames, either where they meet the cabin top, or at the glass/aluminum interface. Two years back I pulled out one window completely and re-bedded with fresh butyl. LOTS of butyl, because I didn't want it to just slowly drop down into the void during hot weather. To ensure the seal was good, I temporarily left the oozed bead on the outside edge. The window still leaked. The other windows were all given fresh beads of silicon along both possible ingress points (outside). Not as a long term solution, but to help troubleshoot. They also still leaked. I would have to say that I don't think water is getting in though these. Yes the boat flexes, but the butyl is certainly going to move with the boat, and the silicone also showed no signs of delaminating.
So that means the water has to be coming from elsewhere, and nav station light aside, it isn't going to travel uphill. So the water must be getting in from the upper deck levels.
I knew that I had deck leaks from all of the hardware being poorly fastened, so I spent last winter on the hard, working on as much of the screws/bolts as possible. I followed MainSail's process, routing out each hole and epoxy sealing followed by butyl treatment when replacing the hardware. I haven't completely finished, but I got the following done:
Yet to finish are the outer sail track, the stays, the shrouds, the pushpit, a couple of the fairleads for lines running back to the cockpit, and lastly the all-encompassing job of checking under the mast.
I'm confident that I'll get there and that one of these buggers is the culprit. It will just take time.
...And effort.
..........and money.
I did also want to comment on the use of foam. I have been very tempted to try it. I know there are different grades or strengths of the stuff, with some of them being quite firm. However, for my part I have the following fears - the stuff isn't marine grade. What will saltwater do to it over time? And how would it stand up to repeated compression or flexing? Wouldn't this just turn it to powder? The big one for me though is that I visualise it like an ice cube in a tray. Nice and solid in its space, until you apply torsion to the outer skin and it just pops free. If this happens it obviously can't hold back the water anymore.
Just my opinion and worth exactly as much as you paid for it
Cheerio,
Mike
My '82 suffers from the same set of problems as you all do. The light above the Nav Station has leaked significantly in the past (prior to me getting the boat). I knew the PO well, and he did NOTHING to stop it, but that leak has not dripped for the past 4 or 5 years. Who knows what changed, but the leak had certainly been active for many years. The light fixture was completely rusted out.
My windows also leak...in a few places. I had originally assumed the water was coming in from the outside of the frames, either where they meet the cabin top, or at the glass/aluminum interface. Two years back I pulled out one window completely and re-bedded with fresh butyl. LOTS of butyl, because I didn't want it to just slowly drop down into the void during hot weather. To ensure the seal was good, I temporarily left the oozed bead on the outside edge. The window still leaked. The other windows were all given fresh beads of silicon along both possible ingress points (outside). Not as a long term solution, but to help troubleshoot. They also still leaked. I would have to say that I don't think water is getting in though these. Yes the boat flexes, but the butyl is certainly going to move with the boat, and the silicone also showed no signs of delaminating.
So that means the water has to be coming from elsewhere, and nav station light aside, it isn't going to travel uphill. So the water must be getting in from the upper deck levels.
I knew that I had deck leaks from all of the hardware being poorly fastened, so I spent last winter on the hard, working on as much of the screws/bolts as possible. I followed MainSail's process, routing out each hole and epoxy sealing followed by butyl treatment when replacing the hardware. I haven't completely finished, but I got the following done:
- traveller (Garhauer upgrade)
- stanchions
- inner sail track
- inside and outside teak handrails
- dodger fasteners
- main hatch outside cover screw holes (s*#t piles of those!)
- cleats
- main saloon hatch
- deck fills
Yet to finish are the outer sail track, the stays, the shrouds, the pushpit, a couple of the fairleads for lines running back to the cockpit, and lastly the all-encompassing job of checking under the mast.
I'm confident that I'll get there and that one of these buggers is the culprit. It will just take time.
...And effort.
..........and money.
I did also want to comment on the use of foam. I have been very tempted to try it. I know there are different grades or strengths of the stuff, with some of them being quite firm. However, for my part I have the following fears - the stuff isn't marine grade. What will saltwater do to it over time? And how would it stand up to repeated compression or flexing? Wouldn't this just turn it to powder? The big one for me though is that I visualise it like an ice cube in a tray. Nice and solid in its space, until you apply torsion to the outer skin and it just pops free. If this happens it obviously can't hold back the water anymore.
Just my opinion and worth exactly as much as you paid for it
Cheerio,
Mike