FIXING LEAKS
"Where is all that water coming from!"

By Emmitt Fitzhughn

One of the most frustrating tasks a sailor can undertake is trying to find a leak. Often times the big ones are easy. It’s those trickles that amount to a gallon or less by days end that are so annoying. The Force 5 has some unique features that make it easy to detect leaks. If you are not familiar with the boat’s construction, however, you may never have the information needed to help you unlock the mystery. I took a tour with Joe Weeks, President of Weeks Yacht Yard, at the Patchogue, Long Island facility last fall and he filled me in.

If you want a leak free boat, here are some guidelines to follow. After that I will tell you about the most common leak of all. It happens to be a place that most people wouldn’t think to look.

The first thing I emphasize, is not to air test your boat. You could do a great deal of damage, if you don’t know what you are doing. The first thing to do in an older boat is to remove your hardware, such as cleats and fairleads, and reseal them or rebed them, be it may, with silicone sealant. Water could be getting under the coaming. It’s a good bet that these are your leaks if you notice you only have water in the hull on heavy air days or after a rain storm in the back yard. On the bottom of the boat, reseal the stern drain unit. This is a common spot. Inspect the bottom for holes. Even a small crack or spider crack (crazing) can go through the laminate and leak water under pressure.

Daggerboard trunk leaks usually show themselves inside the cockpit, believe it or not. If the trunk has let go on the interior, however, you may not have to groove it out along the place where the trunk meets the cockpit floor. Use a Dremel tool or a chisel and refill the area with epoxy or gelcoat. Many people often think this is the last resort. "It can’t be anything else but my trunk! I’ve tried everything else. Don’t Sunfish always leak at their trunks?" I’ve heard this time and time again.

What Mr. Weeks pointed out at the factory, however, was something I never thought of. The trunks aren’t usually the problem. It’s the darn bailer. The Force 5 Bailer is part of the boat, unlike a Sunfish. The bottom hull has half of it and the cockpit floor has a hole drilled in it connecting it to its underneath counterpart. The two are fastened together when the two halves of the boat are bonded together. Joe Weeks pointed out how they have solved this problem which eventually occurs as the older boats age and the putty cracks. The older Force 5 had a bead of putty, to create a cavity between the two surfaces.

Once the putty gets old it cracks, and "wallah!", a place for water to leak. Even if the bailer plug is closed, the water is going in between the two hull pieces. The new boats are put together with a solid pile of putty, which fills the cavity. The cavity really stood no purpose. Suction is just as good if the bailer exit is simply a tubular hole created by drilling through the putty at the correct angles.

To see if this is where your boat is leaking is very simple. Get the interior of your hull dry completely. Plug the hole in the bailer on the bottom of the boat with a rag and maybe some duct tape. Open the cockpit drain plug. Start to fill your cockpit with water. Open the transom drain plug. If water comes out a little while later, you’ve got a broken bailer. The drawing below shows the construction of the old units.