So checking the hulls after yesterday's maiden voyage on my P-18, I have about an inch or more of water in lowest part of the port hull. We did spend some time probably somewhat overloaded and we were riding low enough that the tramp was skimming along the water.
I assume with all the small openings in the hulls that is to be expected ? ? ?
THANKS
Kevin
Edited by cellguru on Jun 18, 2013 - 11:03 PM.
How much water to expect in hulls?
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Posted: Jun 17, 2013 - 07:11 PM
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Posted: Jun 17, 2013 - 07:36 PM
A cup of water is pretty normal, a gallon in is too much. Most, not all cat hulls have breathing holes for pressure to equalize.
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Jack B
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Posted: Jun 17, 2013 - 10:06 PM
Actually after a hard day sailing a gallon is not uncommon. There shouldn't be too many small openings in the hull except a couple of small drill holes, one under the beams and one near the top of the transom if they are anywhere. Common areas that leak are the keels (usually they wear down over time and then a rock strike will cause a hole in one spot), deck lids, rigging tangs that go through the hull and tramp tracks.
If you are consistently getting a gallon or more of water you will probably want to pressure test your hulls. This is actually quite simple and will save you time in the long run trying to isolate leaks. All you need is a pail of water with some dish soap, a garden hose and some duct tape. You take the garden hose, duct tape it to the drain hole and blow on the open end. A couple of lungfulls of air will pressurize the hull. Don't attach a blower, compressor or any other contraption. Those can easily blow out your hulls causing more leaks and damage. Your lungs are more than adequate. Anyway go around the boat blowing on the hose every few seconds and paint or spritz the water on the hulls, start at the keel and work your way up. Mark every place that bubbles so you can fix it later (a sharpie works but is permanent). Now depending on what is causing the leak you have a few options. If the leak is in the hull you probably need to do a bit of glass work, no big deal. Hopefully you don't have a completely worn out keel and it is just a locally worn spot. That is what happened to me. My keel was a bit worn but I had a rock strike the went through at one spot. I took the hull off, flipped it over, tapered the hole with file cleaning it out and using a west system repair pack (and the included instructions) laid 2 layers of fabric and epoxy over the holes. The next day I sanded it a bit to take the sharp edges off re-assembled and sailed the rest of the year. Total time of repair about 2 hours plus the disassemble/reassemble. It wasn't pretty, but no one sees the bottom of the keel, total width was about 2 inches.
If the keel is worn but not through, you can normally get away with putting a wear strip of marine tex 2" wide down the entire hull and that will be good for several years. If you have holes through the fabric you probably need to do a bottom job which required about 2 layers of fabric, 3" and 2" wide, epoxy and a layer of epoxy with colloidal silica to give a tough wear surface. Anyway that is about a days work and hopefully you don't need to do it, but again is fairly simple and easy to do it is just a bit time consuming.
Anyway back to repairing the leaks. From the keel you next need to address any leaks in the sides of the hull, If you have a crease or an old repair that is leaking again you will likely have to cut out the problem area and lay some fabric and epoxy. Chris Hilliard on here has a good tutorial on how to do that in the technical gallery. I'm hoping that given the amount of water it likely isn't this type of problem.
Lastly the most likely culprit and the simplest to fix are the seams and rivets around the decklid, tramp track and rigging tangs. These are the easiest to deal with. Get a tube of marine sealant normally most people use 3M 4200, its a little easier to work with and less permanent than 5200. Use some painters tape to mask off the leaking areas, then caulk away. Smooth it out with a wet fingertip (preferably wearing a latex glove) and let it set. Once it is partially set remove the tape for neat finish. I tend to seal all the through hull bits every couple of years.
Hope this helps.
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Posted: Jun 17, 2013 - 10:33 PM
A great help Dave, thanks much.
For now I think I will make certain it is dried out, and check it next time. We will be not likely be overloaded like that again, I am sure that the tramp scooping up water around the top of the hull had something to do with it.
Thanks Again
Kevin
Edited by cellguru on Jun 17, 2013 - 10:36 PM. -
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Posted: Jun 18, 2013 - 07:57 AM
Part of that was the tramp was pretty loose as well. The rest was me, It got very well tested that's for sure. An inch was not bad. Could have come in a beta round the beams the big holes with the plugs under the rear beam do not actually go all the was through to the hull. Most likely came In around where the beams connect or around the ports. I did not really look at your keels much
Edited by Quarath on Jun 18, 2013 - 12:56 PM.
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Dustin Finlinson • Magna, UT
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Posted: Jun 18, 2013 - 12:40 PM
Three possible leaks on a P19 are the porthole, the drain plug and the crossbars where they are bedded to the hulls. Look for any place on the hull where someone did some work and may have altered the integrity of the hull.
Wolfman's process should find you the leak. Pour the soapy water on the crossbar beds and wait a minute. Sometimes a lots of silicone was used to bed the crossbars and it breaks over time but the leak is under the crossbar and a light spraying may not be enough to get proper bubble volume under the crossbar.
If all this fails to locate your problem, remove your centerboard and look in the well. Rocks get caught in the well, pinched between the board and wall, that are sometimes pushed through the wall when the board is raised or lowered. Also check the area of the centerboard pivot at the bottom forward part of the well.
Here's hoping you find the leak in an easy place to fix.
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Posted: Jun 18, 2013 - 12:56 PM
It is actually a P18 I think he typoed that.
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Dustin Finlinson • Magna, UT
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Posted: Jun 18, 2013 - 11:03 PM
Indeed my typo, it is a P18 with no daggerboards. -
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Posted: Jan 26, 2015 - 10:47 AM
I have a 2012 Getaway that is leaking really badly but I cant find from where. I was going to use the soapy water method but I was going to use an air compressor. Since the Getaway hulls are rotomolded is it still a bad idea to use a compressor? The boats we have take a real beating, they get used 4-5 hours/day in the summer, any other preventitive maintenance I can do to prevent leaks in the future?
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Paul T.
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Posted: Jan 26, 2015 - 11:43 AM
I use an air compressor and soapy water
just be careful - don't ad more than a few psi - get a helper to get the soap everwhere,
may need to do it a few times to find the holes
from what i have heard, there is not a lot you can do "preventatively" on those kinda boats except to keep them undercover (avoid UV) and don't use them in crazy wind as this is when your will wear and worm your fittings out the most
personally - I would sail the snot out of them till they sink - then buy a fiberglass boat that has more performance (for the same cost)
Edited by MN3 on Jan 26, 2015 - 11:44 AM. -
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Posted: Jan 26, 2015 - 12:05 PM
Thanks for the advice for the leaks. We have one fiberglass boat down here, but we take a lot of families out and the Getaways are more condusive for the large groups.
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Posted: Jan 26, 2015 - 06:26 PM
Do not use an air compressor to pressurize the hulls. An air compressor is capable of generating pressures that are more than high enough to damage your hulls. Plus, most general purpose air compressors are intended to deliver very low volumes of very high pressure air (for things like filling bike tires, running nail guns, etc). Whn pressure testing a hull, what you want is a relatively high volume of low pressure air.
IMO, the best way to pressurize your hull is to take a piece of tubing and jam it into the drain plug. Blow half a dozen or so lung fulls into the hull and then clamp off the tube. Then go around the boat spraying the hulls with soapy water (a windex type squirt bottle works best). Anywhere you see bubbles, you have a leak. You will have to "re-inflate" the hulls every couple minutes as you go. I have checked for leaks on several boats using this method and it works great. I would not risk damaging the boat using a mechanical pump- especially on a rotomolded boat where the damage would not be able to be repaired.
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Posted: Jan 26, 2015 - 07:06 PM
Are the pressure equalization holes on the Prindle right below the plugs below the rear cross-beams? I found a little hole, about 1/16th of an inch in diameter, just below the plug on both hulls on my Prindle 16 a few days ago. -
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Posted: Jan 26, 2015 - 09:00 PM
I seem to remember my P16 having those and your reasoning makes a lot of sense since the plugs could easily pop out with a little positive pressure. -
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Posted: Jan 30, 2015 - 12:51 PM
I use a compressor also. Just be very careful, a couple psi is good. -
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Posted: Jan 31, 2015 - 11:55 AM
The plug covers the cavity for the crossbeam bolts. The little hole below is a weep hole to drain that cavity. There should not be any connection between this cavity and the plenum inside the hull. The bolt goes up through solid fibreglass and through the beam.
Edited by klozhald on Jan 31, 2015 - 12:00 PM.
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Posted: Jul 13, 2018 - 12:25 PM
This is an old thread, but I came across it while researching how to pressurize a hull to locate a leak. Thought I'd throw in this additional comment, as it might help someone else who digs this up in the future.
From the comments above, it sounds like using a tube into the drain plug hole and simple lung power is the safe way to go, so I'm going to get a tube and do that in the future.
However, before I knew about that, one of the officers in my cat club advised to use the club's leaf blower on low power setting and simply hold the end of the blower 4-6 inches away from the open drain hole and blow it towards the hole. As with the comments above, he advised to NEVER push the end of the blower nozzle up against the hull around the drain hole, which would create too much pressure and possibly "blow out the hull."
So I did this and it worked for me to locate the leak.
Another guy suggested doing the same thing using a shop vacuum as a blower. But the leaf blower was battery powered, so that allowed me to conveniently just take it out onto the beach to where the boat was located. Didn't have to worry about getting the boat to a place where an extension cord could reach the shop vac. Obviously, not everybody will own a leaf blower, but a lot of people may have shop vacs.
Edited by CatFan57 on Jul 13, 2018 - 01:52 PM.
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Posted: Jul 13, 2018 - 05:06 PM
I cobbled together a very simple way to do it, using a balloon pump from the Dollar Store. It is hard to use lung power, then go around sloshing soapy water if you are solo. This pump is safe, & unless the leak is huge, you can check the entire hull with one course of pumping.
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Posted: Jul 13, 2018 - 10:48 PM
Nice tip, thanks. It's nice to be able to do things solo and not have to depend on powered equipment and/or finding someone to help you when you want to do a basic job.
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Posted: Jul 14, 2018 - 03:56 AM
I use my wife's blow dryer on low loosely gorilla taped to the drain plug hole (not completely covered). Unscrew the inspection port cap so its loose. Look for gaps in the inspection port flange and drain plug flange by unscrewing. The rubber plugs at the crossbar could be old and shrunken, I replaced them with gorilla tape. Leaks in the crossbar saddle could mean a crack. The bolts going through this area are not that big a diameter and the fiberglass around them is fairly snug.
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