It Leaks!!!!! General Forum Forums

Post edited 2:56 am –November 14,2009 by Scott Carle

I'm not sure what the deal is on Valkyr for the stanchions. They don't actually bolt through the teak cap like I have seen in pictures on other DE's. They have fiberglass sockets inboard of the caprail that they bolt into. I'm not sure if there is a bolt though the bottom yet. there is one through the side of the fiberglass socket they sit down in. However as much water as was coming into the boat the other day from rain on starboard it could certainly be an issue. I was thinking it might be the coming in around the screws holding the caprail in place. The teak plugs on 80% of them have come out and I'm thinking that rain is filling the hollows that the plugs were in and then draining down past the screws to the hull. It was just coming out through the teak strips over the starboard settee shelf and running down the hull there. I plan on pulling the cap rails off over there and taking a look. I will probably pull a couple stanchions at the same time and check them out also.

I don't think water was getting into the headliner though. Oh.. it does look as water got to the headliner in the head though. If we get into the head liner I will just pull it out. Paint the underside of the deck with a insulative microsphere paint and then put in a layer of bubble wrap insulation over hard panels that are easy to pull down to inspect behind.

Anyone else have experience with this stuff.. speak up…Please…details please.. even better add pictures to the details.:)

scott

Our 41 DE has the same type of stanchion supports. Some of our stanchions come out quite easily and it is not possible for water to leak into the boat from there.

We have had many problems with leaks on Mariposa Bella and I have found that each and every leak has been coming in from the windows. The water seems to run down the inside of the hull and leaks out in strange and distant spots. I think I have most of them sealed up now. The leaks in my case were all the screw holes for the outer trim ring. Hope this helps.

Bob

Bob said:

Our 41 DE has the same type of stanchion supports. Some of our stanchions come out quite easily and it is not possible for water to leak into the boat from there.

We have had many problems with leaks on Mariposa Bella and I have found that each and every leak has been coming in from the windows. The water seems to run down the inside of the hull and leaks out in strange and distant spots. I think I have most of them sealed up now. The leaks in my case were all the screw holes for the outer trim ring. Hope this helps.

Bob

Bob,

Did you just get your boat in the last year or so? We looked at a DE41 in california and one in Washington or Oregon and totally droolled over them with the pilot house and more standard cockpits. I would have been willing to go into debt to get one of them and even talked to the brokers. They really didn't seem motivated to sell the boats though and it was going to be massivly expensive for me to get the boat to the east coast after buying it. We decided to just keep looking on the east coast for something. We were not particularly looking at standard DE's because of how the cockpits are layed out but were mostly looking at pilot house style boats of various manufactures. Angela approched this fall about wanting to do something different for a few years and "were we interested in the boat?". She offered it to us at a price we could actaully pay cash for,and have a bit left over to put torward fixing Valkyr up. I have a picture in my head of how I am going to do the cockpit to fix what I see as deficiencys in the layout so that she meets my needs. Slightly moved and raised sheet winches. Travelor moved to cabin top or Travelor arch over the helm seat. Hinged seats Port and starboard from even with to aft of the helm seat attached to the rails. Maybe some type of bench seat arrangement.:) I think I will copy this post over to a new topic:) see what other people have done.

Scott …there is a design flaw in the sockets used for the stanchion …after awhile they develope interior cracks due to stress on the stanchion and and the crack allows a leak to the interior …I thought it was the hull deck joint leaking at first …actually pulled the cap rails and rebedded the joint …still the leak …on long passages it was really bad especially up forward …after about ten years I finally figured it out .. to correct it I pulled all the stanchions …used a rotary rasp on a long drill bit extension to route out the interior of the socket …cleaned the interior with acetone …greased the end of the stanchion …poured epoxy (thin) into the socket …inserted the stanchion …after one day (no less) rotate the stachion to break it free from the epoxy…inaddition to seal the socket I used a coax seleant tape forced in around the stanchion and the socket …did the trick .. last 10 years leak free and dry even with some rough passages and a lot of water over the deck …there is another design/construction problem at the deck joint seam aft where where the two cap rails meet with the curl know (decoration) …there is a void in the transition to the cockpit level …only way to fix is cut the cap rails a foot on either side …remove and rebed .. hope this helps ..good luck and stay dry

Post edited 7:58 pm –December 14,2009 by theonecalledtom

Update. After spending a day on the boat yesterday I think I've patched up the engine room issues,only time and some decent rain will tell. It seems the hand rail around the compass binacle was screwed through the core material rather than expoxy and the holes for the screws went right through. I'm finding that a lot of the holes in the deck just go into the code material.

I also found the the cockpit floor is suffering a serious amount of delam. When summer comes back I'll see if I can adress this.

The mast foot was a bit of a joke really. Someone had sealed up the drain hole with sealant. This is a small hole at the rear of the mast. When I released this several pints of water came out of the mast. I would assume that they had been trying to prevent water getting in through the electrical conduit inside the mast but the end result seemed pretty bad as the water that did get in now had nowhere to go but into the boat.

I'm still trying to get to the foot of the mast. I've unscrewed the wood facing into the cabin but it doesn't want to peel away from the rest of the area below the mast. Going to take another look next weekend when less frustrated. Eventually I may even get to try the snazzy stanchion leak fixing approach outlined above!

Just like Greg Smith says above there wasn't any sealing of the core when deck or cabin holes were drilled. None. We used a technique outlined by Don Casey. Here's a link here:

http://www.boatus.com/boattech…..sey/39.htm

This seemed to work great for us,although it's a bit of a tedious process as there are several steps. Drilling the holes only modestly oversize preserves the integrity of the cabin top or deck material.

Of course not only the fastener holes but the bitt and deck pipe openings have no sealing of the core either. The mid-cabin butterfly hatch was unsealed,as were the openings for all the ports,big and small. All were sealed with epoxy is part of our refit process. In the large openings we used a bent nail in the drill and took out perhaps 3/8" of core material to give good purchase for the epoxy mix we used. We used West System mixed with the appropriate thickening agent.

The compression post on our DE 32 is mahogany. The post extends from the underside of the cabin top down through the sole to sit on a fiberglass encased timber which is then tabbed to the keel. The compression post and mast wiring is concealed behind trim strip accessed from the head. The upper area of the compression post may be hidden somewhat by the headliner,I can't remember just what the fabric headliner looked like in that area.

Scott M

We had water coming on on starboard down into the area of the instruments over the chart table. They weren't getting wet but it was flowing down into the fiberglass shelf behind and under and then out onto the pilotberth.. found it was coming from the deck drains . We pulled the drains and re bedded them and put new hose on them.:) leak gone and that area dry.

I have also put in a forward sump and bilge system that the anchor locker now drains into as well as the shower.:)

That is a fairly common project. Our original vinyl is in ok shape so we will probably not be doing that project for a while but I have seen where several people have purchased paneling and cut it the width of the fore and aft space between the under deck beams in the salon and attached it to some sort of trim strip screwed or clued to the beams and underside of the deck. Personally I would use two or three pieces from one side to the other so that you could pull it down in smaller panels that are easier to handle. Maybe glue insulation to the upper side of the panel so that it and the panel come down at the same time. I think that one or two layers of reflectix would work well. Here is a link to it at home depot. It is like bubble wrap with a foil face.  Maybe a layer thick felt glued to the panel and then the reflectix over that.

I think you could do the overhead in the whole boat for about 100 dollars of this stuff with the paneling of your choice. For paneling I might go with one of the products designed to be waterproof. You can get them in different colors or white and different patterns. Zsanic likes the look of the boats such as jason's bohdran with the slats running for and aft between each deck beam. You can get paneling that looks like that that would install easily.:)

http://www.lowes.com/pd_13357-…..;facetInfo=

scott