Water- where does it come in?

Is it remotely possible that you have a small leak in a valve or hose attachment and the particular thru hull valve is not actually operating when you rotate the handle to the closed position?

(Kinda clutching at straws and colorful chalk here...)


LB

After a good day of thinking about everything I am going to check the keel bolts first then move over and up the hull to the deck. I have to rule out the bolts, I will use some powder or paper towels first. The next problem - and I think it is a totally different deal is to make sure water is staying out of the cooler. I see no way that much water could be getting into the boat without getting something else wet. It has to be that the thru hul was open and it filled the tank due to it being under the water line.

I will recheck the scupper hoses, I replaced the port side and i need to check all the other lines to make sure they are sealed, or just replace them all. There are two openings for the backstay ajusters on the transom, I will tape them to test the area under the cockpit and use another small pile of powder across the bottom under the steering wheel.

I will again check the mast and hardware attached to it,

What is the stainless steel called that attaches under the deck forward of the mast to the mast at the base. I think I wil get a sprinkler to set on top of the deck house and see if there is anything theat flows thru.

I will also chech all of the thruhulls by the powder test.

Its going to look like a big cheech and chong movie down there. I think on the thru hulls I will build a powder cone at the base and see if anything moves the pile down hill.

Thanks again everone for all the thoughts.

CSMcKillip said:

What is the stainless steel called that attaches under the deck forward of the mast to the mast at the base. I think I wil get a sprinkler to set on top of the deck house and see if there is anything theat flows thru.

Click to expand...

N.A. Bob Perry calls it a "tie rod" since in ties the cabin top down against the upward pull of the halyards at their mast-base turning blocks. Some models have it going down to the foot of the spar and some (including ours) have a short wire and turn buckle down to a slot on the rear of one side of the spar above the table and a couple feet below the cabin head liner.
If you slack and remove the cable inside, you can lift and re-caulk the outer/top plate and then fasten it back down again. I did that to ours over a decade ago just as a preventative measure.

Loren

Is all of this water intrusion occuring with the boat just sitting in its slip? If the boat is being sailed and you keep finding water in the bilge I would suspect water trapped in the TAFG. It can take several rounds of pumping/drying the bilge to get rid of it, but it will eventually come back if you have a conventional packing gland that drips; I know because I have done it. If your ice box drain is tied into a sink drain/scupper through hull there is a good chance water is backing up into the ice box. I discovered the drain on my ice box empties directly into the bilge, which solved one mystery of why I kept getting water in the bilge. I thought about running the drain hose into the sink/scupper through hull but the bottom of the ice box is below the waterline. Another place I discovered water getting into the bilge was through the cockpit lazarette lid; the lip at the back of the lid was not high enough to prevent water from flowing over and running down the inside of the hull into the bilge. This happened with heavy rain or when washing the boat. Adding some rubber gasket material helped.

Maybe mystery solved

Chris:

My 35-3 has the same setup for emptying the cooler pan......shut off seawater thru hull and pump out the cooler.......

My pump is shot......leaks like a seive.....I replaced the fresh water foot pump a year ago.....they take a beating, and do wear out....in my case I did not want salt water running in, so I did not use the seawater pump except to empty the cooler for the last four yeard....now that the boat is in fresh water it gave me a few fits finding the water intrusion.....the only explaination I can find however for the water getting into the cooler could be that the pump is so badly shot that it is holding nothing back.

As an aside.....DO NOT buy a rebuilding kit.....they simply are a bear to install, and then if there is the slightest warpage on the housing it will just leak again.....I called the factory and the tech told me that they sometimes just do not work.....Best to just replace the pump....

Good luck....hope this is your problem, and that this could be your cure.

Regards

The boat had been hauled out two months ago, there was standing water in the bilge and no water was Colby from the keel to hull joint. At this time I did check thru hulls and lubed them from under the boat.

I do think that the cooler filled with water because it was under the water line and the valve was open. I think that problem has been fixed due to closing the valve at the cooler. I will know for sure this weekend.

Looking at the wood work on the port and starboard sides, you can slide open the panels to gain access to a storage compartment located on both sides. The bottom of the storage compartments have a removable panel to gain access between the hull and the tanks. I will run a hose between this area to see if water is trapped between the hull and the TAFG. I just replaced the flooring so I do know that all of the scupper holes that run the grid are open, and when I run the bilge pump I can see that all of the compartments are clearing the water.

It has to be something else on the deck that is allowing the water to fill the bilge.

Maybe it's the wheel mount, the cockpit maybe filling with water up to the mount on the cockpit floor then dumping into the lower compartment behind the moter? I do not remember any water down there, I will get the hose out and start the process of removing each piece of hardware.

Thanks again everyone for the quick replies, it still is a little frightening to know water is vetting in the bilge, it's at least 4 gallons in 4 days but we have had allot of rain.

Anyone guess the mast leaking yet? Mine did that all the time....

//sse

Sean Engle said:

Anyone guess the mast leaking yet? Mine did that all the time....

//sse

Click to expand...

New boot and caulk was installed three weeks ago, maybe need to check that the installer did the correct job on installation.

How much water can be coming down the mast?

Typically it's not from around the mast - but from inside it. Water gets through the fittings on the mast to the inside, runs down, hits the step, goes into the bilge.

I cannot remember the mast step situation on the E33 - but if it terminates above your bilge, look at the step after a good rain - see if there is any water there (and make sure the weep holes in the bottom are clear - that is, if you have them on the E33...)

//sse

water leak

I also noticed that my bilge was inexplicably wet, usually with clean water which suggested it was coming from a fresh water source. I was drying the bilge under the galley sink and noticed that the underside of the Whale foot pump was wet. I pumped it a few times and was even wetter. Solved the problem by replacing the pump - - I once tried to rebuild one with a Whale service kit and gave up after 3 hours trying to get it right. Other sources of bilge water (on my boat) are the mast (specifically the sail track and internally), anchor chain/rope, hause pipe in anchor well (next to windlass), and shaft log.

Vince Benn
"Wild Blue"
Ericson 380 #22

This may sound ridiculous... but have you tasted the water? If you are in salty or brackish water a taste test is always needed. And...are you sure you did not have a leak in your fresh water tank?

I am in fresh water, so the salt is out. There is no water in the fresh water tank, it's dry.

Keep them coming...

You can't always tell if it's collecting in the TAFG grid. I drained the antifreeze from my hot water tank and some spilled (fortunately the environmentally more friendly stuff). After cleaning it up, my bilge was dry at dock, but after a hard sail (heeled to about 20 degrees) I found more slightly antifreeze coloured water in the bilge. This happened for about the first 3 or 4 sails of the season, and since then the bilge has been totally dry, even after a hard sail.

My point is that the shape and compartments in the grid hold any water, only releasing it a bit at a time, so just running water into the TAFG won't necessarily tell you much.

Good luck--persistent searching will eventually solve this.

Frank

sailingdeacon said:

And...are you sure you did not have a leak in your fresh water tank?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I had one of those also...

Oh - and the bow pulpit was also a source on my boat - in the stanchion base where the wiring comes through the deck - the water ran down the pulpit/stanchion, into the base (no weep hole there, mind you - great design), and then dropped off the wiring onto the back of the fore peak access door.... Very nice....

Basically, you have to methodically go over every potential leak source, and test it - it could be a combination of different sources (mine was/were).

//sse

Ericson, during the approx time that your boat was built, used plastic thru-hulls above the waterline for the thru the transom cockpit drains. They were not UV protected and developed cracks inside, on the bottoms, where the sun would shine into them. I had this on two of my fittings, and it drove me crazy until I found it! I am not familiar with the layout of your fittings, but I would also look into the manual bilge discharge, as well as the siphon-break discharge.
These cracks allowed much of the rain water collected in the cockpit to drain right into the bilge.
On most of these boats, the fittings are bear to change, so a good temporary fix is to smear silicon into the cracks. If you do find that you need to replace them, Maralon is UV proof.

Old Plastic

stobias said:

Ericson, during the approx time that your boat was built, used plastic thru-hulls above the waterline for the thru the transom cockpit drains. They were not UV protected and developed cracks inside, on the bottoms, where the sun would shine into them. I had this on two of my fittings, and it drove me crazy until I found it! I am not familiar with the layout of your fittings, but I would also look into the manual bilge discharge, as well as the siphon-break discharge.
These cracks allowed much of the rain water collected in the cockpit to drain right into the bilge.
On most of these boats, the fittings are bear to change, so a good temporary fix is to smear silicon into the cracks. If you do find that you need to replace them, Maralon is UV proof.

Click to expand...

I used mostly SS and one Marlon fitting to replace all the old ones, and my mystery leaks from the stern area all stopped... and have never resumed.
http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?t=7890&referrerid=28

LB

Leak Tracking

How about using a dry erase pen to find the leak. Mark around the inside of your hull along the topsides, maybe around all your thru hulls and vents. Also mark a few lines under the sole, accross the bilge, maybe one at each access point, around anything you can get to that penetrates the hull. Mark a line around the mast step too. Then wait for a good soaking rain and go check where the lines are streaked. The more you mark the more accurate your results. Good luck.