Leaks
Fitting the bolts through the chasis I liberally coating the bolts & myself in polyurethane sealant & inserted them from below & finger tigtened the nuts. Then placed a ring spanner over the nuts & crawled under the boat again to do up the bolts. I then anounced to my wife that all the leaks were now cured. Returning from the river, Sue asks, purse lipped how it went. The problem is it might only be one bolt which is leaking, but which one of eight is it? The solution is to insert the bolts & hold them in place with a trolley jack & then tighten the nuts. That way the sealant is not turned off the bolts.
The glass fibre was found to be very thin & had a crack in the region of the hitch. The longitudinal chasis needed to be removed to repair it.
This was easy to do with the modified chassis joint. At first it was assumed that the bolts hadn't been sealed properly.
With six people on board the bilge pump started to run & the water was just below the floor. It was coming through the trailer lighting socket due to a combination of being low in the water &
the bow wave. The socket has now been raised.
The splashwell drains are very easily blocked by leaves etc. The rain flows off the roof into the splashwell & then into the boat.
This was made worse by the spashwell having been sliced through at this corner when the door frame was fitted. The
cover
virtually
stops any water getting into the spashwell & keeps the drains clean.
The timber used at the joint at dado level is pressure treated so should be able to
withstand the odd drip.
A bead of silicone was run along the edge of the hull beneath the timber strip to form a gutter & drainage holes drilled
Plastic electrical truncking was cut down & fitted beneath the window to remove
any water that got past the seals or condensation on the windows.
The corner joints were particularly troublesome hence the aluminum plate beneath the corner to direct the drips into the gutter.
These joints are now OK but should they cause a problem the back-up is there to catch the drips.
A gap was deliberatly left in front of the shelf at the helm to allow any drips
to fall through to the gutter below. The discolouration shows where water got onto the end of this shelf.