Stopping leaks from freshwater

With the seawater leaks taken care of, now I started to look at stopping rain coming in.

First up – I had noticed water coming in near the hatch area, and it a couple of (terrifying) cases, actually dripping in through the AC sockets. NOT GOOD.

I unplugged the AC power, double/triple checked it was unplugged, then removed the panel on one of them and found this

Ugh. I put the plate back on and made a note to replace it later.

Side note – While I was fiddling around I found these wires stuck out of the gallery ceiling

THEY APPEAR TO BE LIVE AC WIRES, JUST HANGING THERE.

This is HIGHLY dangerous, so I wrapped them in duct tape like so. I’ll deal with them properly later.

Next, I went outside and found a number of holes drilled into the top by the hatch – it looked like an attempted dodger mounting that had gone very wrong. By sticking a bit of wire down the hole I determined it went down really far – these holes were almost certainly the source of the leaks. I filled them with marine-tex.

I’ll tidy it up later – as you can see there are some OTHER holes as well, but they only went in a cm or so and were filled with water, I’ll have to dry them out and fill them another time.

With that done, it was time to try to seal the engine hatch.

The hatch itself was covered in silcone gunk, and the edge of the hole had the remains of a long-ago dead gasket. I cleaned off the gasket and tried to make a dent in the silicone. Then I cleaned up the area around the hole with acetone, and laid down strips of door seal.

This ISN’T going to work I don’t think – I will have to find some other way of doing this.

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