New E 29 Owner looking for leak fixing advice

Hello all,

I'm a new owner in the Bay Area, having just bought my first sailboat, an E 29, a couple weeks ago. The rain has begun and, as would be expected, so have the leaks. I think there's pretty significant amounts of water coming in through the handrails (evident behind the wooden paneling, below the windows, in the 'closet' and probably elsewhere) and I don't know what would be the best thing to do given that there won't be a long dry spell until spring.

Should I just remove the caulking around the topside handrails, recaulk, and wait for dry weather in 4 months? Would it be better to take off the rails, rebed them and hope for the best?

I don't know when these leaks were last tended to, if ever, and is there a good chance that there's bad damage to the fiberglass or anything else?

Behind the wooden panel in the galley, the fiberglass is moist to the touch. Is there anything I can or should do about this?

Pardon the barage of questions. As much information as possible would be great. Thanks for your help. And if there's anyone near Berkeley who would be willing to take a look at my boat, I'd be grateful. Thanks,
Zack Reidman

It being a new boat and all you probably want to go sailing. I would haul the boat and get it covered for winter and do the fix right. You are just delaying the inevitable and more permanent damage can occur between now and when you do the fix. Remove all of the portlights and handrails, remove all the wet wood and let it sit until everything else is dried out. Then start reinstalling and repairing.

Once you start digging into these areas I guarantee you will find deeper problems and you will want to fix those too.

I just recently replaced all my portlights because of leaks and found a lot of rotten wood around the openings. I had to remove much of the teak veneer and replace some of the substrate in order to glue new veneer up. It was a big project but I am glad I did it. I have a dry boat with portlights I can see through and all of the interior woodwork has been refinished. A friend commented that it now looks like new.

Sorry to be such a bummer but you will be glad you did it right.

Handrails

Zack~

Since you are in California and hauling your boat is not really a winter thing out there. I would remove the handrails and place 3M clear duct tape over the holes and let them dry out for a few months. Go back and rebed with a good caulk of polyureathane or polysulfide. As for your other leaking hardware or portlights, it might be a good time to rebed them too. This is a long hard task that requires a fair amount of time and a really skinny flexible kid to get to some places.

Best of luck and congrats on yur new boat!!

Zack--

I have a 32-2, and some of the rails have moisture intrusion. I know that if I attempt to remove them, it'll turn into a much larger project than I anticipate, so I keep the boat tarped in the winter, and this helps keep most of the water out of the rails.

Are these rails through-bolted? If so, you can probably remove them, wait for them to dry out, and then rebed them. If the screws go into captive fasteners, it's likely you won't be able to get them out. So if you take this one on, be prepared for a big project (you can see why I use a tarp, although at some point I'd like to install new rails--$$$$$).

If I were you, I would start methodically rebedding all the metal hardware. Look at the weather forecast for a week-long dry spell, remove some stanchion bases or other metal hardware, and see what the wood core beneath the fiberglass looks like. If it's dry, rebed. If not, research how to dry out and repair the core.

Rebedding the ports isn't such a huge task if you do one every few weeks, but again, be prepared to find that some ports that are failing due to bad gaskets. I have two sliders that leak terribly, and I am trying to figure out how to rebuild or replace them--the latter will be pricey.

It would be worth your time to go down to your boat on a rainy day with a flashlight and see if you can see where water is coming in. One source of water in my boat was the genoa track. The stainless steel fasteners had corroded a bit of the aluminium track, and water was seeping down along the screws (again held by captive nuts--trying to remove them would be a big job). I ended up cleaning the surfaces, and using a product called Captain Trolley's Creeping Crack Cure, which is a liquid sealant. For $12 and a total of an hour of my time, it sealed the leaks. I think after a season of sailing, the load of the jib sheets may have altered the seal, so I'll repeat the process for the upcoming sailing season--no big deal.

The more you spend working on your new boat, the more you'll learn. If you are as lucky as I have been, you'll become friends with people at your dock, and be able to share repair techniques, and sailing skills too. And keep in mind that maintaining a boat is kind of like painting the Golden Gate Bridge: once you think you've finished the job, you just find another, so in addition to working on your boat, be sure to get out there and sail as much as you can!

Thanks everyone!

I had no idea I'd get responses so quickly! The more the merrier. I'm on a steep learning curve here, so keep it coming. All that's been posted has been really helpful so far. Thanks a lot,

Zack

Zack,
Keep your eyes open for New-old-stock ports on Craigslist and also eBay. I picked up a new Lewmar port for $25. from a Craigs notice a couple years ago...
At that price it will be used as a replacement for any of our opening ports if they need a rebuild.

Also, check in often on the sites for the port suppliers and makers for deals on return items. That's how I got a new Lewmar size 70 Ocean fore hatch to replace the bent one on our boat in '95. It was $300., which was about half the retail price at the time.

Loren

I would do what Rob suggests, remove the hand rails and tape over. Then watch to see if the port lights leak. Depending on what was used to seal the windows you might be able to tighten the screws on the inside trim to slow the leaks. If butyl or putty tape was used you might actually stop the leaks. Another place to look for leaks are the chain plates.

One particularly frustrating leak to find on my E27 was a cockpit drain that leaked on the quarter berth. I re-bedded, shut the thru-hull off, filled the cockpit with 4 inches of water and no leak. Then when it rained it would leak just a badly as before re-bedding. Turned out to be the lid on the port lazaret leaked and the water got between the upper and lower layers of the cockpit floor. I added some weather strip foam tape (1/4"x3/4") to the lid and haven't had a drop of water since. $10 and 4 minutes

Instead of taping over the holes from the removed handrails, I'd recommend going ahead and drilling out 1/2" hole from the deck to (but not through) the headliner, then filling the hole once with unthickened epoxy, wait until that soaks in, and then filling with thickened epoxy. You'll have to do it eventually anyway if you want to do the job right, so why not now? The only problem with this strategy is that you may just accept your boat without handrails for a while, which is where I am at now. Gotta finish up that project....

I have to get in on this one.

1: remove the hand rails. Through bolted on the port side all bolts, the two in the head are different the front bolt on the starboard side is through bolted with a plug covering the bolt in the headliner of the head. The second is threaded into a nut bedded in the carriage roof and will probably rip out when you try to remove it (I glassed this hole in and did not place a bolt in the second position upon reassemble).
Take the rails off and use the aluminum duct tape that is aluminum not the silver fiber reinforced to cover the holes and let them dry for the winter or more before any filling is done.

Then over drill if you like and fill, when replacing you should counter sink the holes on the topside to allow the sealer to have more thickness and that will give a much better seal.

2: remove the shroud chain plate covers and clean the mess off and you will see holes that look like they were cut with a chainsaw if they are like the ones on my boat. My boat had holes almost the size of the cover plates and holes were filled with some kind of filler that looks like Bondo and is not very well bonded to the deck if at all. I cleaned out the filler and backed the holes with cardboard and filled with 4200 and that is stiff enough to hold but packs away from the shrouds after hard sailing so I did a line of 5200 around the shrouds and that stopped the leaks at the shroud chain plates.

3: port lights ….. see if the stop leaking after the hand rail leak is stopped. The water form the handrails goes in between the headliner and carriage roof and runs out on the shelf behind the settees and also out the port light frames.

Other leaks can be the jib rail bolts. On the E29 they may be glassed over from the bonding of the deck to the hull. Also the stanchion bases may be a source of leaks.