Hi John, The bubble solution is normal child's soap bubble solution, available at your local super market, by the bottle full. One bottle of solution should be enough to find 100 leaks - and I certainly hope that you don't have that many! It was applied from the top; into the C/B slot opening area in the cockpit - at the top back of the C/B trunk - the only joints to check are at the top. The rest of the C/B trunk is solid fiberglass. Detergent should work just as well, but I happened to have a left-over bottle of bubble fluid from when the grand children were here, so I used the tools at hand. Connie John and DesAnne Hippe wrote:
Hey Connie,
Thanks for the ideas. I know that I have a leak at the leading edge of the keel -- water is dripping out of a small crack there. I did some repair of this last year and it slowed the water infiltration down some. Still leaks a bit so will repair again. I have also been wondering about the aft end of the centerboard case though.
So with the bubbling agent, did you apply this from below with the centerboard removed? Also what did you use for a bubbling agent? Liquid soap?
Thanks,
John
Hi John,
Connie here....
It sounds as if you have the same kind of problem that I did on our M15.
After a brisk sail across Lake Champlain and back to the Essex, NY marina, I found both lockers under the mattresses with about a gallon of water on each side.
At the dock my wife careened the boat, and I found water merrily flowing into the lockers on each side, through gaps in the inside liner.
The next question was: where is the water coming in?
To make a long search operation description short, it turned out to be coming from the aft end of the centerboard trunk slot, at a joint between the centerboard trunk and the interior liner of the boat M15).
I found it the hard way, by filling the inside of the boat with water and waiting for it to drip underneath to see where the leak was. Once it started dripping, I found the leak was in the centerboard trunk. The next question was; exactly where in that area was the leak?
To pinpoint the exact location of the leak I made Styrofoam hatch boards; sealed all companionway joints, and sail locker lid joints with duct tape; fired up my big shop vac on "blow"; put the hose nozzle in a hole I cut in the Styrofoam, and pressurized the interior of the boat. Then I painted every area in the centerboard slot with copious amounts of bubble solution, and watched for the location of where the bubbles would originate.
When I found the location - the aft corner of the centerboard truck / cabin liner joint. I then removed the teak board in front of the cabin entrance (drill out the center of the teak plugs and break out the pieces - new teak plugs are available at WEST Marine) That allowed me to do some surgical removal of the back end of the centerboard slot (pieces were reinstalled after the repair) in order to gain access to the leak area. I then ground out material at the joint where the leak occurred, using a DREML tool. This area was then sealed using thickened epoxy.
My repair solved the problem: no more leaks: dry lockers at any angle of heel or amount of burping water through the C/B slot because of excessive speed.
Good luck on your search; and the pressurized interior and bubble liquid is a lot easier solution as a search tool than the fill-it-with-water method I initially used.
Connie
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