Tales of the mysterious self-filling bilge
The mystery is solved!
The boat gremlins I had thought were filling up my bilge each night are not in fact the cause of the leaking, although I’m still not ready to rule them out 100%. The cause of the leak and mysterious self-filling bilge is in fact a combination of 1. Some small holes we left uncovered following the gantry coming down; now I know this is an obvious one but I still couldn’t work out how that much rain water could land directly in the small holes to fill the entire bloody boat. 2. The boat being positioned with a slightly backwards slanting angle meaning that all rain hitting the deck is washing down the gunnels and being funnelled into those holes which then feed into the stern locker. 3. A small crack in the stern locker which probably started off as a hairline crack then through freezing and thawing over winter has extended to allow water to drip into the engine compartment, run along the hull underneath the engine and into the bilge.
I have applied a very temporary fix by plugging the gantry holes with plastic which has stopped the water entering the stern locker and then the bilge. Then added fixing stern locker crack to the list of things to do after the mast comes off the boat which should be tomorrow!!! This all happened last Tuesday and a quick check while at the boat on Saturday showed a nice empty bilge so the process of elimination as to the area of the boat leaking finally paid off.
The plan for repair will depend a little on access but my preferred option will be to grind down the current glass fibre on the outside of the locker (inside the engine compartment) and then re-fibreglass it up. This should give a proper fix rather than using a putty which may split during the next freeze.
Once I can actually get in there to complete the repair I'll add some photos of before and after but until the mast is on the ground I can't access the locker more than peeping in and nobody likes a peeper so it will have to wait for now.
