Water in the Port Bilge

I do not generally use this blog to complain or focus on the more unpleasant aspects of living on a boat, but in the interest of giving you a more complete picture of what we experience at sea, I will make an exception in this case.

As some of you may recall from my posts on the Atlantic crossing, ile de Grace had more than a few leak problems, beginning the day out from La Rochelle, France as we crossed the Bay of Biscay.

Since arriving in Annapolis, Maryland in June 2008, we have resolved many of them. The starboard bow leak, caused by poor caulking at the salon window seam, was fixed with black caulk. The leak at the mast seam needed to be re-caulked. Fixed. The leaks into the engine lockers was caused by improper sealing of the seams underneath the back rub rails. Fixed.

The port bilge leak, however, has been another problem.(For non-boaters, a bilge is the part of the hull that lies below the floorboards—it is V-shaped and is often used for storage space.) The source of leaks are very difficult to diagnose because when you are at a dock, the boat is not experiencing the sea conditions of waves splashing from up below and all the rocking and rolling. However, a powerful hose can help. Usually, the diagnostic process includes drying out the bilge, taping paper towers to the inside bilge walls, spraying a hose wherever you think water might be getting in, and then watching to see which paper towels get wet. Even this can be difficult, because the leak could be in one place and the water trickles down the path of least resistance to where you see it.

Last spring, Jon and I did this process and found a source of one leak coming into the port stern bilge (once water is in a bilge, it spreads throughout the hull, flowing to the lowest point).

We have 3 drains in the floor of our cockpit. On a boat, they are called scuppers. Two of them had a lot of cracks. We had originally thought water was coming in through the seam where the cockpit sliding doors are connected to the floor. We had it re-sealed at the boat yard. But no, it was leaky scuppers. Our boat yard filed out the cracks and re-sealed them. We thought the problem was fixed. But on our way down the Atlantic coast, we still had a lot of water leaking into our port bilge.

This is what a leaky scupper looks like. The dark lines are cracks.

We saw some small cracking in the scupper, and Jon resealed it with a more flexible caulk. Boaters call it 3M-5200 and we crossed our fingers that the problem was solved. 

But again, the answer was no. In the Bahamas we were still taking on seawater. We began to suspect that the rub rails on the outside of the boat had not been properly caulked, so after a water test at anchor, using the dinghy, we found wet paper towels. The rub rails help protect the boat from being scratched if it bumps up against another boat or dock. But they also cover the seam where the top of the boat is sealed to the bottom of the boat. So, before leaving Georgetown, Bahamas, Jon re-caulked the top and bottom sides of the rub rails. (The bottom side did not look like it had ever been caulked.) We crossed our fingers, hoped for the best and headed for the Caribbean Sea. Within a day, there was seawater in the bilges. :(

This was so heartbreaking. It has been our most persistent problem with this boat and we need our bilges for storage. To make the long ocean passages, we need to carry a lot of provisions and we need a place to store them. It’s not good when your food and toilet paper are sitting in seawater, even if they are double wrapped in plastic bags. With every leak, the bilges had to be emptied, and dried out. (Not fun!!!! And difficult to do because someone has to crawl down into the bottom of the hull in areas under the floor boards and you get cuts and bruises from the rough undersides of the fiberglass.) We finally gave up using the bilges in the Bahamas and stored things under the cockpit table and on top of the bed in the port bow cabin, until we are sure there are no more leaks.

As you see below, this is NOT a comfortable position to be in. And Guita is the smallest person on the boat, weighing 100 lbs! Stephen is 6'2", Jon is 6' and, while my stats are classified, I am bigger than Guita.

In the Atlantic, we were taking 4-5 buckets of water out a day. Here, we took out just over one bucket along the Atlantic Coast. This was too much water to ever be acceptable, especially for a new boat.

Once in Shelter Bay, near Colon, Panama, Stephen took the newly caulked rub rails off the port side. Once exposed, Jon discovered that a number of seam screws were missing and most of the seam caulking underneath the rub rails was gone, if it was ever there. It really makes me wonder if Fountaine Pajot used Elmer’s glue to put our boat together instead of epoxy and fiberglass. Or, FP should have given us 2 cases of caulk before we left France and said good luck. I know other Orana 440s have never leaked, and those owners don’t know how lucky they are. But there was very poor quality control when our boat went through the assembly line.

Now, additional screws have been added to the hull seam. It was been sealed thoroughly with 3M-5200. The rub rails have been re-attached and re-caulked with UV resistant marine caulk (3M-4000).

So, dear friends and family, before we head out into the Pacific Ocean on our next leg to the Galapagos Islands, please keep your fingers crossed with us that we have finally fixed our leaky bilge problem and can actually enjoy more free time on the boat instead of mopping up nasty bilge water and caulking in one of the hottest and most humid places on Earth.

I’ll let you know when we reach the Galapagos if the problem is solved.