in the summer of 2018 I had the opportunity to move up to a Kelt 7.6 for sale in our marina from a Hunter 23. The in-water survey went well, with the surveyor mentioning that the bit of water he found in the bilge came from ice cube meltwater from a nearby cooler. We bought the boat and enjoyed its sailing characteristics. However, every weekend we would find a progressively greater amount of water in the bilge. We would sponge out the water, but I was concerned that there was another leakage point somewhere. I suspected a leaking through-hull sink drain fitting.
To err on the side of caution, I decided to install an automatic bilge pump. Now you Kelt owners know that the bilge on a Kelt is more of a shallow pan under the cabin sole, but I eventually found a Whale low-profile pump that just managed to fit under the sole. However, I went mad in trying to find the source of the leak over the summer.
One Friday we arrived to see water gushing out of the bilge pump through-hull fitting. The cabin sole was virtually afloat and the pump was running almost continuously. Something was definitely wrong here so had the boat lifted out and placed in its cradle. Upon inspection, I found a small round hole about 3/16" in diameter close to the knotmetre through-hull. What the...? Teredo worms? Not in Ontario's Lake Erie, surely! I pushed a long-shank drill up through the hole until it hit an obstruction about 6 inches in, then drilled up further. The drill exited out of the platform that held the battery! I decided to cut the fibreglass support and remove the battery platform only to find the offending hole along with an actual screw sticking up through the hull into what had been the battery box. This screw was literally holding on by a thread as I was able to push it down through the hull with my fingernail, whereupon it left another neat round hole through the hull. I figure that someone in the boat's distant past - maybe even a worker in the Kelt shop- had tried to install some kind of fitting, but had drilled up into the inaccessible glassed-in battery support box. This enterprising fellow then simply filled the two holes with screws, slapped a bit of caulking and paint on the screw heads and Bob's your uncle.
It was my luck that one screw had finally corroded enough that it literally fell through the hull, leaving a neat round hole. Water then fountained up through this hole, flowed between the hull and hull liner and exited out near the bilge. It is amazing how much water can gush up through a 3/16" hole below the water line. I decided to enlarge the two holes into an hour-glass shape, filled them with high-strength epoxy compound, followed by several layers of glass cloth and epoxy resin both inside AND outside the hull.
By this time it was late September so I anxiously awaited lift-in the next Spring. No leak. The bilge remained dry as a bone all through
that summer and the next. I await a delayed launch this year because of the blasted Covid rules, but hopefully I will again experience a dry bilge. However, I think to myself how lucky I was to have installed the automatic bilge pump. Otherwise the boat may literally have sunk and I would have been...ahem...totally screwed.
Locked
