Chasing a leak

By First Mate Tamera - Edited and Enhanced by Captain Scott

During the winter months we had a lot of condensation on the boat.  This caused a couple of issues:

1) Mold and Mildew (covered in a later post)
2) Moisture running down the inside of the hull.

Item #2 caused the bilge pump to run often.....so we thought.

We would often hear the bilge pump run and that is not unusual on a boat.  However, it is not common to hear it run in conjunction with the occasional running of the water pump.  This started out a rare occurrence that began to happen more often.  We looked for a leak and could not find any source of water running and again we put it off as condensation collecting and running down the hull.

Then one night we noticed the bilge pump was running about every 8 minutes so we seriously began chasing a leak.  This is not an easy task on a boat. 

Many of the lines are run along the hull and you can see sections of the lines looking through hatches, doors and port viewers. 

As some of you know I am an RN and work in the Endoscopy world.  For Colonoscopies we use a colonoscope (a long tube with lights, camera and access channels) that is inserted into the colon to find abnormalities.  THIS tool would have been very handy in our search for this leak.  We improvised by sticking the camera into various holes and snapping a photo, bringing it out and looking at the results.  We did this until finally I heard Scott say "son of a bitch, there it is"

Finding the leak is half the battle.....now we have to fix it.

The leak was actually a fitting for the shower.  This is something we could fix it we could just reach it.  Remember the lines run along the hull and you can only see sections, well you can also only REACH the sections you can view.  The leak was just out of reach.....now what.

Scott not being the type to give up easily decided we would add a new access port to fix our problem.  So he cut out the new access port and the fortunate part is that the area with the leak was between the hull and shower wall.  He cut the hole, fixed the shower fitting and installed a new port hole cover.

We were up till 1:30 in the morning fixing the leak but we slept so much better that night.