wjejr
Active Member
Hello fellow Sunfishers. I hope you are all safe and well.
I've had my 1971 Sunfish for more than five years, and for the first three it never leaked a drop. A couple of summers ago, however, after returning from a sail I discovered that the cat bag from the inspection port was wet. Hmm. I first thought I must have thrown something in the bag that was wet, but after looking a little more closely, sure enough, water had leaked in. Thus began my off and on, mostly off, search for the leak.
I tried the pressure method a couple of times using soapy water, and although I did find a leak under the bow handle, that wasn’t the problem. I also tried taping the dagger board slot and filling it up with water, likewise the mast step, and the cockpit, but no luck. The water sat for hours, but not a drop leaked into the boat.
BTW, pressuring the hull scares me to no end. Even using a hose on a Shopvac exhaust has me terrified that I am going to crack the bond, now 49 years old, between the foam blocks and the hull.
I had sort of given up on ever finding the leak, but now with stay at home mandates and time on my hands, I decided to have another go at it. I’d been thinking that since water was getting into the boat even on the calmest of days, the leak must be somewhere on the bottom. With that in mind I decided to fill the boat up with a couple of inches and see what happened.
Picture 1: My boat up on sawhorses
Picture 2: The boat filled about two inches deep with water. The dark brown near where you see the reflection of my phone is from damage that has since been repaired. The black strips are stringers that make the hull stiffer.
Picture 3: Drum roll please, is the leak. Yay! You can see I marked it with a green squiggle. That spider crack, as it will turn out, is more than it seems.
More to come...
I've had my 1971 Sunfish for more than five years, and for the first three it never leaked a drop. A couple of summers ago, however, after returning from a sail I discovered that the cat bag from the inspection port was wet. Hmm. I first thought I must have thrown something in the bag that was wet, but after looking a little more closely, sure enough, water had leaked in. Thus began my off and on, mostly off, search for the leak.
I tried the pressure method a couple of times using soapy water, and although I did find a leak under the bow handle, that wasn’t the problem. I also tried taping the dagger board slot and filling it up with water, likewise the mast step, and the cockpit, but no luck. The water sat for hours, but not a drop leaked into the boat.
BTW, pressuring the hull scares me to no end. Even using a hose on a Shopvac exhaust has me terrified that I am going to crack the bond, now 49 years old, between the foam blocks and the hull.
I had sort of given up on ever finding the leak, but now with stay at home mandates and time on my hands, I decided to have another go at it. I’d been thinking that since water was getting into the boat even on the calmest of days, the leak must be somewhere on the bottom. With that in mind I decided to fill the boat up with a couple of inches and see what happened.
Picture 1: My boat up on sawhorses
Picture 2: The boat filled about two inches deep with water. The dark brown near where you see the reflection of my phone is from damage that has since been repaired. The black strips are stringers that make the hull stiffer.
Picture 3: Drum roll please, is the leak. Yay! You can see I marked it with a green squiggle. That spider crack, as it will turn out, is more than it seems.
More to come...