Leak to nav desk

[S/V AMITY]

  Have had a water leak onto the nav. desk... been that way since we got the boat last summer. Specifically the drip emerges from the stanchion bolt access plate opening located above the wet locker. See picture.  Assumption has been that the water was from the stbd. aft port or the stanchion base.  Rebuilt & re-sealed the port & all the stanchions.  No joy.

  Nextly, we re-bedded all the deck & cabin top hardware.  Because of the cabin inner-liner the leak could be coming from most anywhere and running downhill until it found an opening.  Discovery this weekend was that the leak is coming from aft... from the forward end of the cockpit coaming.

  Why the leak?  When the teak coaming trim was applied by Pearson, they likely bedded the teak in silicone caulk/sealant.  Over the following 41 years the sealant failed and allowed water to migrate under the teak and thence into the core  Once that happened, all bets were off.  Every hole drilled for mounting cleats, winches & so on was a water drain into the coaming wood core.  From there, somehow, water migrates in the lower lip of the liner to the lowest point & drains.

  The proper solution is to pull all the coaming hardware (again), remove the teak, open up the soaked wood core, re-core, re-bed the teak, refasten and re-mount all the hardware.  No small job.  Too late this year to get into that party.

  As a temporary fix, thinking right now is to just caulk the teak with polysulfide to at least stop the leak.  The core must be mush by now so next year the job will be to do the core job.

 

[SVJourney]

Still the stanchion base?
Sometimes, once it has ever been done in silicone, it is almost impossible to clean it well enough for the new sealant to stick.  Life sealant or some other polysulphide at this point?

[S/V AMITY]

  It's not the stanchion bases that are leaking, it's where fasteners, going through the coaming teak, pierce the underlying glass and let water into the core.  The glass below the core must have a hole (or holes) from over-drilling for the fasteners.  This would permit water to get to the liner... which then carries the leaked water forward and onto the chart table.  Anyway, all pointers point that way.  Next heavy rain we'll tarp the coaming area.  If no water drips below then we'll know what we're dealing with.

[Jim S]

Even thought you may feel or think that the stanchion bases are not leaking, the aft base is the most common source of leaks over the chart table, especially the area over the aft shelf.  I have known three 365s with this problem and sealing the stanchion base solved all three problems.  One boat had an additional leak in the port gasket that was flooding the overhead light at the chart table. 

The aft stanchion bases are the bases most likely to leak since they are the stanchions that get grabbed the most as people board.

Not that these are the only source of leaks.......

[SVJourney]

I had to seal it more than once.  Eventually I made a gasket out of 1/8" rubber and that worked.

[jpendoley]

Amity-misery loves company.  I too. have a newly discovered project. After pressure blasting the bottom with beads to remove twenty years of bottom paint, we have discovered blisters beneath the very thin, poorly applied barrier coat.  So boat comes home and the bottom gets peeled.  After doing my Hope my Vanguard 15 years ago I swore "never again"-but here we go.... hope my shoulders last.
Wanna bet the bottom job morphs into topsides and possibly deck paint after that?

[S/V AMITY]

   Found general area of the water leak to the nav. desk.  The water is leaking from a hole somewhere in the fwd. end of the cockpit coaming.  In previous attempts I had flooded areas on the cabin top, the ports, the mid-ship skylight hatch, stanchion bases & etc. with no leak found.  The last, and seemingly least probable area, was the coaming.

  Since we had a forecast of two days of steady rain, I temporarily sealed all around the teak overlay on the coaming with butyl... see picture.  Checked yesterday after the rain had passed and no leak.  So, the question now is how to get at the leak in the coaming under the teak overlay.  My working theory is that under one of the coaming teak bungs there is at least one drilled hole with no screw in it or a non-sealed screw.

  To address this we will pull all the bungs forward of the primary winch and see if there is a screw missing.  While we have the bungs out, we will back out the existing screws, pump a good amount of Sikaflex into the holes and re-fasten.  Before re-bunging the holes will do another water test.  If the test is good then we re-bung and job done.  If the leak persists that means we have to pull all the hardware off the coaming & remove the teak overlays to get at the leak.  If we do that we will re-core the coaming since it is no doubt soaked.

[S/V AMITY]

  Went down after work and pulled all the bungs in the suspect area.  Two of the bungs were 5/8", the rest were 3/8".  The 3/8" bungs all had screws under them and penetrated only slightly into the core.  The two 5/8" bungs were over screw-less holes.  Measured these hole depths with a small allen wrench (pictures) as a gauge and sure enough both holes penetrated the top layer of glass, the core and the bottom layer of glass thereby allowing water to enter onto the interior liner, run fwd. and drain through at the stanchion service plate opening.

  This leads me to believe there was a different config. dodger sometime in the dark past with different mounting points.  The port side coaming has the same two 5/8" bungs in the same location.  Those will be opened up as well and addressed.

  The way I see at this point of sealing these holes permanently will be to inject copious amounts of Sikaflex in the offending holes, screw in some snug fitting screws, add more Sikaflex and see if that does it.  These holes account for the soaked core.

[S/V AMITY]

... more pictures.

[S/V AMITY]

  This weekend filled the  problem holes with thickened epoxy, set snug-fitting screws in the holes and set bungs.  Next heavy rain will confirm the fix. 

[S/V AMITY]

Still had the leak!  Turns out there are two holes each under the 4 bungs.  Dug out the epoxy from the first attempted fix, drilled the leaking holes to one drill size larger and filled with Sikaflex.  Heavy rain forecast for the rest of the week so fingers & toes crossed.

[Jordan]

When you say two holes, do you mean like it was adjusted at some point?
I just can't picture it.

[S/V AMITY]

  Exactly.  Two holes right next to one another under each bung.

  If these do not turn out to be the true source of the leak, the teak will have to be stripped off the coamings to find out what is going on under there.  I just can't believe that Pearson would have applied the teak at the factory with a through-hole in the glass top of the coaming.  If there is a hole there, the leak must've been there from day one.  Seems unlikely but I've been wrong before...

[jpendoley]

Of corse with our headliners it could be coming from elsewhere.  In particular, someone mentioned a gutter built into the headliner on the port and starboard perimeter. I have a leak just in front of the forward galley quarter bulkhead That I have not been able to track down-and I probably won't find it until I redo the deck and rented or replace all ports, stantions and everything else that can leak. The gutter effectively channels all leaks away from the source. Next boat will have a removable headliner built in sections with battens over the joints. Molded headliners are a pain in the neck.

[S/V AMITY]

  The leak is definately coming from under the teak on the coaming.  The test I did by temporarily sealing up the teak coaming seams with butyl (see picture below) before a heavy rain confirmed that.

  Regarding the molded headliner, it was a convenience for the builder but definately a PIA for the owner in trying to chase down leaks.