OK, I'm stumped

Wisdom is making about 25 gallons of water a week, and I think that 25 might be slipping up towards 30 gallons a week, from what I pumped out on Sunday. The floorboards were floating, after a week of sitting in her berth. the leak has been going on for a while, but recently it's gotten worse. This is NOT good.

I'm stumped. The water is appearing under the molded-in sole, and draining into the bilge. Here's what it's NOT.

1. The through hulls forward of the head aren't leaking. There's a partial bulkhead up there that prevents water from draining back into the rest of the boat, and it's completely dry. So, it's not coming from the sink drain in the head nor the seawater intake for the head, nor the knotmeter through-hull.
2. there's a through-hull under the port settee, near the main bulkhead, and not far from the mast. It's for the discharge of the holding tank, when offshore. THAT's not leaking.
3. the keelbolts aren't leaking, I sponged the bilge dry and water is oozing in from elsewhere. The rudder shaft isn't leaking. It's dry as a bone back there.
4. The stuffing gland (prop shaft) isn't leaking, and the bolts for the prop strut aren't leaking, even though I wrapped a line around the prop shaft after the Doublehanded Farallones. I note that the speed of the leak increased dramatically after that race, and has just slowly gotten worse since then.
5. the galley sink drain and seawater intake through-hulls aren't leaking.

Sand, yes you read that right....SAND appears throughout the bilge when water sloshes around in there. There's a large hull repair by the head. From some things Mike Maurier said about S 30~30's that he knew about, I believe the boat was holed up in Lake Tahoe at some point. As far as I can tell, the boat somehow got into the hands of someone who wound up in jail, and when he couldn't make payments to his bail bondman, the bondsman got the boat. He's the one that brought it down here, and South Bay Boat Works did the repair. South Bay Boat Works is now out of business, but I've talked to the guys who did the work, and they said they thought it was good to go. Anyway, I gave that repair a good inspection and thumped on it pretty good when I hauled the boat out in November and the repair seemed solid, but I suppose that's a possibility.

OK, I'm stumped. I'm tossing this out to all you folks for any collective wisdom and suggestions y'all might have about where the frickin' leaks might be coming from. Anybody got any ideas? I'm going to go stare, again, at every square inch of hull I can see this Saturday, including pulling out the water tanks, and if that doesn't show up something, I'm gonna haul her and have the yard glass over most of the through hulls ASAP.

Alan Received on Mon Jun 4 09:38:32 2001