Hi everyone!We just sailed our new (to us) Ericson 38 home to Portland ME and are very discouraged by the amount of water in the bilge. Every day, I am using a shop vac to take out about 6 gallons of water from the bilge. Where do we start looking for the source of the leak? Thanks!
A little "bilge csi" is in order, as laid out so well by
tenders.
Starting further back in your ownership process... was it dry when you viewed it? When you trial-sailed and motored it? When surveyed?
Dry on the delivery trip?
Absent some aged fresh water hose loostening or splitting, I would look at the stuffing box. Back when we had one of those, I always had trouble getting the pressure on the packing just right. When off a tiny part of the turn on the nut, it would drip even when stopped. In our situation a quart or two a day at most was the result. Being a rather inept boat fixer, especially as applied to stuffing boxes... I changed ours over to a
PSS shaft seal in '95 and have never had any more water enter from that source.
Perhaps the delivery home was the first time the over-age packing was really put to use in... years (?)...
If that's the problem, there are some threads here and an awesome picture article on MaineSail's site on how to repack one of those "mature technology" devices.
There's another packing gland at the top of the rudder tube, but that should never leak when the boat's at rest.
It's not uncommon for the prior owner (s) to ignore any and all of this maintenance for years or even a decade.
If it's a seeping keel bolt, that's a whole different problem (highly unlikely at this stage of investigation, tho).
Keep us posted.
Loren
edit: add link:
http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/stuffing_box