Boat leak ..it is sea water... advice needed.

[FairweatherDave]

Good point Vic.My lab test was perhaps a bit basic, one desert spoonful by mouth of the cleanest bilge water I could find. But it was extremely salty, and as someone who drinks it a bit too often windsurfing I concluded it was seawater. Fortunately I had a nice cuppa tea ready to cleanse the palette. But I had already considered it could have come from the fresh water system and studied that pipework looking for leaks. I'm as sure as I can be it is sea water. My plan for my next visit will be to measure how much has got in again, and then start looking harder for sources of leaks around the engine, and run the engine, doing the food dye idea if I spot nothing.

 

[alan_d]

Does the water still come in when the engine is not running and the seacocks are all closed? If so you will have eliminated lots of possibilities. For what it's worth, the two occasions when my Konsort started to fill with water were after launching at the start of the season (I had removed and greased the heads seacock and not done it up tightly enough) and when motoring for a lengthy period in a calm (split engine cooling water hose - easy to diagnose as the water was warm).

 

[FairweatherDave]

Does the water still come in when the engine is not running and the seacocks are all closed? If so you will have eliminated lots of possibilities.

Have to say that is exactly what I am hoping to find next time I go to the boat, will update the thread when I do, which has to be relatively soon! Going to try and make it a lowish tide visit for sticking my head in the bilges again, so the boat isn't rocking about too much in the forecast wind coming ..........

 

[pcatterall]

Does the water still come in when the engine is not running and the seacocks are all closed? If so you will have eliminated lots of possibilities.

Slight caution on this..... that was my logic searching for my last leak, it turned out to be a loose connection on my anti syphon trap.......so stopped engine closed all sea cocks... water still seemed to be coming in but it was the contents of the trap slowly emptying into the bilge.

 

[TeamSpirit]

I thought it was my keel bolts a while back but turned out it was the bearing of the water pump slowly failing then one night it completely failed but fortunately the auto bilge pump could cope with flow until I could resolve. With additional engine use described might be worth checking water pump bearing they can fail creating the sort of quantity of water in the bilge and if the slope is sufficient will appear dry. Can you view it when the engine is running?

 

[FairweatherDave]

I thought it was my keel bolts a while back but turned out it was the bearing of the water pump slowly failing then one night it completely failed but fortunately the auto bilge pump could cope with flow until I could resolve. With additional engine use described might be worth checking water pump bearing they can fail creating the sort of quantity of water in the bilge and if the slope is sufficient will appear dry. Can you view it when the engine is running?

Yes I will be checking very closely all around the engine, particularly with it running. Plan to take rags,dye and bungs, (sadly the bungs will be shaped from closed cell foam from a child's swimming float, not wine corks, which are getting rarer in the sort of wine I drink
The fun bit will be climbing into the cockpit locker to look at the shaft seal and exhaust trap. As I bounce around on the mooring I'd better make sure I've tethered the hatch as it would be easy to get locked in.... (mobile will be in pocket)

 

[bert49uk]

on my old Konsort the sea cock for the shower tray is bellow water line, if left open this will fill boat full of water

 

[FairweatherDave]

Hi Bert
Was your shower on the starboard side opp. the heads? We just have a small hand basin there (with sea cock) next to the wet locker. But I will be going round all the seacocks again as part of the search. The one thing I can do is rule out leaky windows and water coming down the mast which is nice, because I was there while it has accumulated, at least that is good to know

 

[RichardS]

on my old Konsort the sea cock for the shower tray is bellow water line, if left open this will fill boat full of water

If the shower outlet is below the waterline, it's not so much the level of the sea cock which is important but the level of the top of the shower tray compared to the water line. If your boat had the waterline above the shower tray and no syphon break loop or non-return valve that seems like a recipe for disaster. Presumably you had to start running the shower pump before you even opened the seacock.

A very risky design!

Richard

 

[FairweatherDave]

Well I've been to the boat again and I said I'd update. So this time I removed 7.5 big buckets which still crudely equates to a litre an hour. And all the seacocks and skin fittings are fine and the engine hasn't been touched. So it is the keel bolts. Congrats Skipmac. The reason it was not more obvious to me is that the lockers where the keel bolts are have a false bottom. Also the keel nuts and reinforcing plates are half glassed over in places and I believe the water is able to travel directly under this layer of fibre glass (which also forms the false bottom) towards the bilge compartments visible from the centre-line. The bilge paint in the lockers is not original, and I think this fibreglassing is not original too. I am guessing the keels have been rebedded at some point in the past but now need doing again. The point is that viewed from directly above the nuts the weeping seems minor, and clearly it is more than that. I am now considering an automatic bilge pump as a short-term solution as I don't want to waste my limited sailing season, and will appreciate any views on this, but will start a new thread for that purpose. Thanks for all the help here, much appreciated.

PS My theory is it is that the keel bedding was tired but it was only when we used the boat for the last two weekends and dried out that the water ingress started to get significant. Prior to that the boat had only been in the water for three weeks and seldom drying out.

 

[VicS]

Well I've been to the boat again and I said I'd update. So this time I removed 7.5 big buckets which still crudely equates to a litre an hour. And all the seacocks and skin fittings are fine and the engine hasn't been touched. So it is the keel bolts. The reason it was not more obvious to me is that the lockers where the keel bolts are have a false bottom. Also the keel nuts and reinforcing plates are half glassed over in places and I believe the water is able to travel directly under this layer of fibre glass (which also forms the false bottom) towards the bilge compartments visible from the centre-line. The bilge paint in the lockers is not original, and I think this fibreglassing is not original too. I am guessing the keels have been rebedded at some point in the past but now need doing again. The point is that viewed from directly above the nuts the weeping seems minor, and clearly it is more than that. I am now considering an automatic bilge pump as a short-term solution as I don't want to waste my limited sailing season, and will appreciate any views on this, but will start a new thread for that purpose. Thanks for all the help here, much appreciated.

Try to incorporate some sort of monitor for the bilge pump operation so that you will know if it gets worse.

 

[Iliade]

PS My theory is it is that the keel bedding was tired but it was only when we used the boat for the last two weekends and dried out that the water ingress started to get significant. Prior to that the boat had only been in the water for three weeks and seldom drying out.

Assuming that the Konsort is constructed similarly to the Centaur -

My Centaur had been out of the water for an indeterminate period when I got her. The keels had been strengthened and re-bedded at some time in the past, but on launching they leaked about as badly as yours, worse on passage. After a couple of months afloat they took up and no longer leak.

I think you just have to consider these as if they were part of a wooden boat; The keel bedding is not there to seal the bolts, they have oakum* wrappings to do that. They should also not be 'nipped up' if they are weeping, but re-caulked.

* Or something similar, I can't remember.

 

[rogerthebodger]

Try to incorporate some sort of monitor for the bilge pump operation so that you will know if it gets worse.

Vic do you mean like this

 

[VicS]

Vic do you mean like this

Yes.

Either that or a cumulative running hours meter

 

[earlybird]

[QUOTE..PS My theory is it is that the keel bedding was tired but it was only when we used the boat for the last two weekends and dried out that the water ingress started to get significant. Prior to that the boat had only been in the water for three weeks and seldom drying out.[/QUOTE]

Don't wish to be over-pessimistic, but you might find that curing your problem involves more than just re-bedding of the keels. Twin-keeled Westerlies were very prone to failure around the keel attachment points. Lots of references are available. The problem is well recognised. Probably WOA is informative.
The cure is removal of the keels and re-inforcement of the hull structure around the keel-stub area.
Konsorts were definitely affected, a couple on drying moorings where I kept my boat had this problem in the '90's. One lost a keel and sank!
Centaurs and Warwick also suffered.
I'd think that the vast majority have been fixed by now.