Rain Water Inside Tinker

[TinkerSSS]

Like the SSS, Tinker is now 40 years old. Tinker has held up to all the abuse like a champ and, for the last several years of drought, I haven't been too concerned about bailing out a little bit of water after sailing. A little bit of water has recently turned into a LOT! of water.

I'm open to all suggestions for the best way to keep the rain water outside instead of inside the boat.

These are some of my favorite sayings after asking around about what to do to stop all the rain water from finding it's way inside my small boat.

"Keep putting 5200 on it until it stops leaking." , "Bathroom plungers do work on cockpit drains." , "It's never a drought inside my boat."

The cockpit drains stopped working. Then, the cockpit filled up and started draining through the hatch in the back of the cockpit into the boat. This combined with the entire bench surface area draining through the badly sealed bench hatch made for quite a mess inside Tinker. It's a little swampy inside Tinker at the moment. Before the weight of all that water crushed the boat sitting on the trailer, I used the manual 10 gal./min. bilge pump for more than 1/2 hour and still needed a bucket afterwards. The hatch in the back of the cockpit was put there for access to the through the deck backstay that I'm considering removing to go back to the original Wilderness backstay arrangement. Every through the deck hole seems to be a place where the driving rain finds it's way inside the boat. The mast boot, engine boot, chainplates, backstay, bench hatch, cockpit hatch and companionway hatch all have issues with rainwater intrusion. It's hard to sail when you've got a tarp over the boat and it's difficult to bail singlehanded while sailing with the other hand.

With a little bit of plunger action, now the cockpit drains are working again but I need a few dry days before the Three Bridge Fiasco for the 5200 to cure.

Anyone else with some good ideas for keeping the rainwater out?

Cheers,

Matt Beall
Tinker - Wilderness 21

 

[BobJ]

Sorry about the soggies Matt.

Several years ago I bought semi-custom tarps from Mytarp.com. One tarp functions as a standard rectangular boom cover and the other is a custom triangular cover made to fit the area forward of the mast. For a small upcharge they will use stainless steel grommets and put them where you want them. They were also willing to make the section along the boom a double layer. The tarp edges come to within a few inches of the sheerline and are attached with bungee cords, so there's a little give in the gusts. The tarps were about $300 (plus the bungees, etc.), so way cheaper than a custom boat cover.

Now the only place I get water in the boat is down the (keel-stepped) mast. With the big downpours it's still a lot of water, but I can get over and pump it out before it reaches the floorboards.

 

[Wylieguy]

Matt,

Well to be jocular, since the boat's on a trailer you could drill some drain holes in the hull????? Then old wine bottle cork stoppers when you splash the boat????

Okay, to be serious. Those of us who sail old boats have rainwater leakage. Period! The good news is that shows us where seawater can get in if we get into a serious storm offshore. More good news is, at least I think it's good, that you/I can fix things. Some fixes are simple, some are not. I just finished caulking the window (bolted on) and Saturday I found my supply of t.p. floating in water along with the tide book and several other things I thought I'd made safe. Double checking, I'd missed a 1/16' spot on the outside window - right above the t.p. shelf.

1. Cockpit scuppers. They need to drain! On a trailer, on the water. Although they may have trash grates, stuff can build up in the drain hoses, especially if those hoses have some bends and crooks in them. You used one method. The better method is removing hoses and checking. Just how long have those hoses been in place anyway? Maybe new ones? You've got them working for now, but are they working 100% and not going to burst on you? Do you have seacocks on the drain hoses?

2. The above-mentioned windows/ports. Not a mid-winter project, but removing and re-bedding. In the meantime a bead of ugly caulk. (Just don't miss the spot above the t.p. shelf.

3. Same for hatches. Over the decades caulking, gaskets, and other methods of keeping them sealed dry out, wear out, get loose.

4. Deck fittings: Re-bed. Chainplates: A particular concern because water intrusion can mean problems with the supporting structure and/or stainless steel issues. Nice thing about a Wyliecat -- no chainplates to leak. Mast boot/partners: If we didn't have masts, we'd be power boaters. I built a cuff from SCUBA diver suit fabric that fits around the mast and deck plate. Works pretty good when sailing, but in the berth the Wylie sail forms a funnel dropping accumulated directly onto the mast and the cuff isn't perfect. That's where the 6 gallons of water noted below came from. In a boat with no bilge.

I realize none of these is easy and probably not before the TBF. It looks like we may dodge rain on Saturday, so you probably won't sink. After I dumped 6+ gallon of rainwater out of my boat Saturday morning before the CYC race, I commented to the crew that sometime before I bury the anchor I want to own a boat that doesn't leak so I can keep that library of sailing books and a roll of t.p. onboard without contributing them to the dumpster on my way to the car.

See you on the water Saturday morning. Have fun! -- Pat

 

[Lanikai]

Well to be jocular, since the boat's on a trailer you could drill some drain holes in the hull?????

Nothing jocular about it! I would absolutely consider installing a garboard drain if I had a dry docked boat. http://www.oocities.org/earlylight160b/InstallGarboardDrain.html. Concocting a reminder to put the plug in before launch would be the hardest part for me.

But it sounds like you have a few water ingress spots high up and all over the cockpit so the simplest method, if annoying, is to tarp it.

 

[Gamayun]

Ugh, so sorry. That's a lot of water. You should just race and then worry about the 5200 drying out. But don't get me started about rain and leaky boats! I'm living on mine now and know intimately where all the drips and seepages are coming from and as soon as it dries out, I'm going after them with a vengeance. However, I did see today a link to something called "Cobra Zip-it" drain cleaning tool. You might want to use that to keep the drains free flowing; you know, BEFORE you have to use the plunger

 

[AlanH]

Clogged cockpit drains....been there.

Many years ago during my first LongPac, I took a wave in the cockpit. I had a one-piece hatchboard in and it had a latex gasket behind it (made it a PITA to put in and take out) so only a few cups of water got into the boat. However, I sat thigh-deep in water for about a minute and a half before the next wave tipped us over enough that about 3/4 of that sloshed out, back where it belonged, over the side. It then took another several minutes to empty the cockpit.

Then and there, I decided to change those drains.

Upshot was, I replaced the stock 1-inch marelon through-hulls for the cockpit drains with expensive (not flush..ugh, should have made 'em flush) two-inch bronze seacocks. I replaced the hoses and ...this was a tricky job because of how that boats cockpit floor was molded... replaced the marelon cockpit scuppers. Then I put the new hoses on. When I launched after that years haulout, I put some bathtub drain floppers over the cockpit scuppers and then bucketed about 30 gallons of water into the cockpit.....yanked off the flappers and stood back and watched.

MUCH better. Also, never had problems with rainwater in the cockpit, again.

If Tinker goes out past the Golden Gate on anything like semi-regular trips, y'all might think about doing this. It's not cheap, but man, it's worth it.

OR...you could spend a small fortune and take the boat to...I dunno.... Moore sailboats and have 'em cut out the transom. Think how totally cool that would look! It's only money!