I disagree that you should find the leak first. Your boat is 17 years old, it's good practice to remove bung housings and replace or refit with fresh sealant at this point, particularly when you have 4 of them! Chances are it will fix the problem but if not it should have been done anyway. Bungs / housings are very cheap as is a tube of Sika, might as well do it now.
And is it open (no floor) under the splashwell?Where is the water - the centre area or in the buoyancy chambers?
If so get it tilted up & completely dry then launch it & get your head down there with a very good torch to see where it's leaking from. Use your hands to feel for water too, sometimes it's hard to see it running down or exactly where it's coming from.
You may also have to drift & find a bit of breeze & chop to get a little wave action against the transom.
Over the years in mine and friends boats that seem to start slowly taking water - get worried about something wrong - test everything - stuff around and it ends up being bung/housing. Putting water in hull doesnt always work prob because not enough pressure (may be better if you filled it right up but I wouldnt do that,)
Replace bungs first, if persists then housings then go from there (but will prob fix issue).
+1 for doing the bungs first. Don't know if I've ever bought a boat that wasn't leaking there when I got it. Properly manufactured glass hulls will have the entry hole slightly oversize and sealed with epoxy of some kind to stop water leaking into the internal timber work. It is then up to the sealant to stop water getting past. Plastic bungs in general don't seal real well to silicone, and over time , the water will just flow past between the silicone and the bung housing outer surface..Sikaflex is better, but will still fail over time. If you remove your bung housings easily, there's your problem. And also use some white marine grease on the bung thread and seal, this helps a lot if you boat stays in the water for long periods.
So what's the recommendation, reseal everything on the transom as a scheduled maintenance requirement?
How often should it be done?
My boat leaked at the silly little two piece plastic grommet thing that serves as the splashwell drain and the water was running down between the splashwell & the transom on the inner transom wall. That would have been the last place I would have thought of after resealing every other screw & bolt on the transom first. Just lucky for me I looked first to see where the water was coming from.
Hopefully he's been on here long enough to know who provides good advice and who doesn't
Hi, If I could relay my experience.
I had my boat for four years before I noticed excess water from the bottom bungs.
All of a sudden, it went from an acceptable cup of water to about 10 plus litres.
It all started when I fitted a boat catch, below the bow eye. Because it was in assessable from the inside, the boat catch fitter cut an inspection hole from inside to get access to fit a plastic V and tighten up the bolts. Well, the boxed in area was holding about 40-50 litres of water.
I found out about it when I picked up the boat. So, next thing was, when powering along, water was now coming through this inspection hatch that was put in.
Anyway, my bow eye, definitely is reachable above the boat catch from inside putting my hand thru the new inspection hatch and in doing so I felt that the V block to which the bow eye was going thru was rotten ! A repair was done, as I found out afterwards, by the bow eye being removed and heaps of sika pumped in there !.... Siks won't seal rotten timber ! The pressure of the water when I was driving the boat forced the water through the bow eye, testing out of the water would have been futile, a hose cant reciprocate the ocean waters pressure.
So, bearing in mind that, from when the water first started being noticed out the back bungs, to finally cutting out the entire floor, was about 3 months, I found that the bunks, the floor, the stringers were basically all toast, hence my current rebuild. It didn't all rot out in that 3 month period, so had I not have fitted a boat catch, there was absolutely no sign of the ingress of water that was occurring, which could have been happening for quite some time. It was bad enough when I saw the damage, yet alone if I had left it for any length of time afterwards, especially as a trip to Portland was on the cards at the time. Two stringers simply fell over when the floor came up !! it was very scary considering we could have been 60km out from Portland a few weeks later.
I still cant fathom how more water never came out of the bungs pryor to it starting ! but sure was glad I decided to take a skill saw to the floor when I did......
Just saying..........
Given the age of the boat Im sure you will want to find out all or any of the contributing factors..a small cheap to fix problem today can be a bank bandit in two years or so..If looking at the bungs I would be also trying to assess whether water has made its way into the transom itself.The bung holes holes through the transom should have been sealed off with flowcoat or the like and let dry prior to fitting the bungs and sika the living daylights out of the fitting..mostly people just rely on sika which works until it doesnt anymore.As far as holes generally into the transom....there is a way to ensure the holes are sealed completely..but its tedious and time consuming and boat builders wont do it.. drill an oversize hole to take the screw or bolt...fill the hole with epoxy and let it set,then drill the screw /bolt into/ through the epoxy.Done properly there is simply no pathway for water to travel through to the wood core.Its more a technique used by wooden boat builders which says it all!
I'd check seat mounts too!
Mine was identical to Scottars, and there w a s more water inrougher seas, it doesnt take much of a leak as ther r is a whole ocean trying to push water in.Originally Posted by scottar
As much as Shark Poker and Crunchy'smethods will work, they are not something I would do with my own rig. Not a big fan of fresh water under the floor in glass/timber constructed hulls. I get a similar amount of water with mine - difference being I know where it comes from and simply haven't been bothered to fix it. My deck wash plumbing will leak when it is pressurized - either by the pump or running at speed with the sea cock open.
"bow eye ( although I think this drains into the drained anchor well.)"
That is what I though too Brendan until I spent a couple of days with my head in the hole in the bulkhead cutting out the wet bow block. There was the tiniest of cavities that drained to the front under bunk storage - they may not all have it depending on who glassed the timber block in and what sort of job they did. Mine is now full of epoxy.
Did you check its salt water and not fresh water getting in?
It's salt water, never had the boat in fresh water
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He is not suggesting you had the boat in fresh water, but if it's is fresh, it means it's getting in from washing the boat, or rain, so you might be looking in the wrong place for the "leak" it's kind of common for boats to get wash down water in the hull.
Now I understand. Not water from rain washing etc.
It's dry when I launch and water in when I return.
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Crunchy... I followed your advice. However how do i flip my boat over again?
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