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**roverhi** · 21-10-2016, 10:39

Butyl is a great sealant but a pita to use. Takes way longer to apply the butyl and carefully wrap around the fasteners and it will continue to squeeze out over time. Use a plastic scraper or your fingernail to clean up but you have to go back several times over days/weeks/months as it continues to ooze. It is a sealant that will work where others fail but time consuming to use and clean up is a pain. Also it's VERY soluble in petroleum based solvents. Tried using my old standby mineral spirits to clean up once. The butyl turned into a black slurry and permanently stained the porous old gelcoat. Clean it up by scraping it off.

Life Caulk (Polysulfide) has worked for me for more decades than I care to remember. Easy to apply and quick cleanup with Mineral Spirits. It also cures through water vapor so can be used on a wet deck or underwater. Seems to last a lot longer than the 3M products in an opened tube. 5200/4200 (Polyurethane) also water cure so will work on wet surfaces. Find LifeCaulk easier to work with so don't use the 3M or other Polyurethane products.

If you really want to make this a permanent fix, epoxy the pukas where the fasteners penetrate the deck. Use a Dremel tool with a 199 bit to clean out the deck core around the puka, squirt straight catalysed epoxy resin into the hole then suck out as much of it as you can. This insures a good bond and wets down the whole area with resin. Thicken the remaining epoxy with a structural filler like West Systems 404 and fill the holes. If you go in at a steep angle, the 199 bit won't tear up the puka much so hardware will cover your work and you won't need to worry about refinishing the area. You do need to have access to the back of the area to seal it off with a good tape. Duct tape works, masking tape doesn't to seal off the inside. You'll never guess how I found that out. If you can't get at the interior, insulating sealant foam in an aerosol can squirted into the puka before you start may seal off the inside of the hole. This is a very time consuming process so be prepared to pay for having someone else do it if you aren't a do it yourselfer. It is the only way I know of to be sure that there will be no core rot caused by fasteners compressing the core.

rognvald · 21-10-2016, 11:01

Dockhead,
Before you tear your boat apart, get some red water soluble food dye. Use a West System syringe filled with the fluid and test each bolt in your track. If the leak is truly coming from the track and not somewhere else, you will be able to spot it easily. If there is no leaking, you must check elsewhere for your leak. I have used this technique successfully for many years. Also, the brown fluid is caused by A.) rust from a bolt or b.) wood which is water saturated and starting to rot. Good luck and safe sailing.

barnakiel · 21-10-2016, 13:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dockhead

(...)

Why would the bedding have failed? The boat is only 15 years old and nothing like this has ever happened before.

(...)

ROFL

Read any of my comments thru the forum on 15 years' old boats!

Yep.

Pull out only the leaky bolts first. Dry & seal just the bolt hole. Re-fit. Test next morning.

9/10 you can fix this problem ad hoc by sealing just the offending one. You do the full remove/lift/rebed exercise next time in the boatyard.

Apply the goo generously, round the bolt, - only once the tip gets visible down below. Wipe excess - do not let any excess dry on the outer surfaces.

Do not be tempted to lift the track by sliding a blade under it where you have removed the bolt ... (in silly hopes of injecting some sika there) - this will seal this one BUT it will break the seal on the adjacent ones ...

Cheers,
b.

Suijin · 21-10-2016, 13:47

As I read your report of hunting down the leak, it reminded me different the construction of every boat is. My Valiant was designed and constructed for the most part so that I can get to every thru-deck fitting and bolt without destructive surgery on the interior. HOWEVER, being built in 1986, it was put together with 5200. I swear they must have bought it by the 55 gallon drum. If my jib car tracks ever started to leak I honestly don't know how I would get them off without destroying the deck. The upside is that 5200 seals really well and seems ageless.

If you were you I would consult with Moody about how to approach the cabinetry issue. They know how it was put together and may have suggestions on how to proceed. Personally, I would rather disassemble cabinetry and then reassemble it if necessary then just cut an access hole, but that's more labor intensive and may require refinishing when you're done. Not a bit deal if it's oiled teak but a whole other story if it's varnished.

I agree with Rover about filling the holes and redrilling them. It will give you the best result.

Why did this happen? I think your loose nuts are the clue. Someone just didn't tighten them down enough when the boat was constructed. It's just one of those things that slipped by...perhaps a distracted worker, and it happens on the best of boats.

If the nuts were not torqued down properly the bedding was bound to fail over time. I'm actually surprised it took 15 years.

**JPA Cate** · 21-10-2016, 22:49

If we're going to imagine what might have vibrated the nuts loose (as in the track was originally possibly installed properly), I can think of a couple of things that might have affected it. One, Dockhead has stiff sails, and non-stretchy lines, and he loves to power up the boat in 40 plus knots, he's written about it. However, beating into 40 plus does bash a bit, and the sails and sheets don't give so much. Fifteen years of annual vibrations, is a fair wee while.

Another possibility is that when the fishing boat struck the boat while anchored, that exacerbated a pre-existing problem.

Dockhead, I hope you can get it sealed up before you go. It's not going to be a fun job at all, but I think if Moody can't tell you how to take apart the furniture with the least damage, maybe a cabinet maker can, as was suggested above. Good on you for finding the loose nuts and the source of the brown water. It is NOT good news, but you're manning up to it, and what more can you do?

Ann

toddedger · 21-10-2016, 23:49

Be careful about tightening things up. A lot of problems stem from over tightening hardware and crushing the core. Once the core gets crushed in an area you get more movement at the fasteners, more leaks, and possible rotting of wood core.

poiu · 22-10-2016, 03:42

A full re-bed would be best if it were possible to do without major damage to your joinery. If a rebed is a terrible job you could try to narrow down the leak to certain bolt holes and you could remove them and seal up with butyl.

Also, I've had luck using boatlife liquid where the problem was shrinkage of the caulk, or with weary small cracks, with Capt Tolley's.

A good leak detection system is fluorescent dye. It leaves a snail trail and no stain to clean up. Pour it into a bolt track recess and wait an hour, do the next and so on.

**Dockhead** · 22-10-2016, 04:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by poiu

A full re-bed would be best if it were possible to do without major damage to your joinery. If a rebed is a terrible job you could try to narrow down the leak to certain bolt holes and you could remove them and seal up with butyl.

Also, I've had luck using boatlife liquid where the problem was shrinkage of the caulk, or with weary small cracks, with Capt Tolley's.

A good leak detection system is fluorescent dye. It leaves a snail trail and no stain to clean up. Pour it into a bolt track recess and wait an hour, do the next and so on.

Thanks to everyone for all the extremely helpful tips.

I wish I could remove individual bolts, but I have the Lewmar heavy duty (Size 3) track which has the bolts trapped in a channel in the bottom of the track -- so no access from the top. I can only remove the nuts.

I'm afraid I've already overtightened some of the nuts

, but I believe the deck is solid glass in this spot so hopefully no harm done.

In any case, I'm leaving for China tomorrow so no way to do a proper job before I leave. My goal is to get the leak stopped temporarily. I've figured out how to get access to most of the nuts, and all of the ones where the leak is (looks like its centered on three bolts, over the cooker), so I'm going to tighten the rest of them and do another hose test.

If that doesn't work, then I'm taping or caulking the edges. I might also cover the track in plastic or create some kind of gutter, to keep water off it altogether.

It's a crying shame to lose this perfect weather (12C and sunny and dry) for work like rebedding, but there's nothing to be done about it. My work has to come first at this stage. I'll be off the boat for nearly a month. Maybe some chance of a weather window for rebedding, when I get back.

Thanks again to everyone.

IdoraKeeper · 22-10-2016, 06:10

Good luck on the business trip. Having just gone through a major boat repair I know what it feels like to try to focus as the boat repairs escalate. A really good shipwright can dismantle the cabinetry with minimal loss of important parts. You have had a good long run of hard sailing. Now the piper must be paid. Fix it correctly and don't spare the horses. The boat will reward you for it.

**Dockhead** · 22-10-2016, 07:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by IdoraKeeper

Good luck on the business trip. Having just gone through a major boat repair I know what it feels like to try to focus as the boat repairs escalate. A really good shipwright can dismantle the cabinetry with minimal loss of important parts. You have had a good long run of hard sailing. Now the piper must be paid. Fix it correctly and don't spare the horses. The boat will reward you for it.

Thanks; a good point.

I've sailed the stink out of this boat -- I'm guessing about 15,000 miles of mostly hard sailing over the last 7 years, all except one month of it above 50N and in weather often F8 and more. I've gotten used to thinking that she is indestructible -- she's so strongly built, and has been so completely free of any kind of problems with the structure or envelope, no creaks, no groans, no drips of any kind. But there's a limit to everything. Those tracks take many tonnes of force when I'm sailing hard upwind -- naturally there is going to be some tendency for them to work loose and start leaking.

Thanks; I'll try to be more philosophical about it.

The "proper job" is even worse than I thought, however. The back of the track extends past the aft bulkhead of the salon, and so some of the nuts are behind my GRP molded shower unit. Bleh! I'm right now chopping a hole in it. Bleh bleh! The only good news is that GRP is easier to patch than teak veneer joinery.

toddedger · 22-10-2016, 09:57

My local hardware store sells Nickel plated metal plugs that snap in that I've used in a few instances, and they come in several sizes. You could use a hole saw in your shower overhead to get at nuts and then pop in plugs. The don't look to bad.

**Dockhead** · 22-10-2016, 10:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by toddedger

My local hardware store sells Nickel plated metal plugs that snap in that I've used in a few instances, and they come in several sizes. You could use a hole saw in your shower overhead to get at nuts and then pop in plugs. The don't look to bad.

Well, I have very meagre shipwright skills, but I can, amazingly enough, do a simple glass and gel coat repair

I've just done the cut in my shower. The nut is -- glassed in!

And leaking. No question now about where the leak comes from.

I've started to tape it up. When I get back from China I will rip it all out and rebed it