16' cruiser - water in helm seatbox

Z

zuunami

New member
We can't figure out how water is getting into the helm seatbox. After a medium relatively short rain last night, we had about a 1/2 cup or more of clear water sitting in the helm seatbox, in the aft midline area. There wasn't any appreciable condensation inside the boat, in fact it was relatively dry. It's covered at night and during rain with a 1/2 full body angola sunbrella cover that goes about to the middle of the windows.

Since we're just finishing up cleaning the bottom, we're sitting a bit askance in the driveway - it's sitting at about 5% toward the aft, and about 4% toward starboard. So it would seem that the water in the seatbox would be about the center of the boat, give or take :)

So, today, we heavily washed the boat (in sections, then waited) down each side from the bow, over the top, and toward the back of the cabin. No water appeared in the seatbox. The amount of water we used was way more than the rain we got overnight.

I'm wondering if the water isn't just condensation, but then the question becomes how does condensation get into that seatbox. The seatboxes in this year model are glassed in, but open to the bow. A while back we added a dam to the front of each seatbox to block any water from coming in.

If we can't find how the water's getting in, we're thinking of caulking or otherwise filling around the inside of both seatboxes, but then we don't want to be trapping water.

It's just not making sense, if anyone has any ideas, it would be appreciated! For tonight, we've built a dam around the area with butyl tape to see if we can locate where it's coming in. We used chalk lines yesterday before the rain yesterday to see if we could identify the direction of the water coming in, and there were no marks on the chalk. (Beware the use of chalk, it really stained the paint :)

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Since it’s in your driveway, cut a few pieces of brown paper that will fill the whole area under the seat and next time it start raining, grab the paper and a couple beer , set the paper under the seat box, open the first beer and wait for the paper to get wet. That should make it clear which direction the water is coming from and give you a good starting point to locate how it get in there.
 
well, that's definitely worth a try. Although if we're not there to see it coming in (i.e., too many glasses of wine waiting), all of the paper might get soaked and foil the attempt at location. Rain usually doesn't start til midnight, but at this point, it's worth the wine to try, thanks :)
 
I would put that brown paper across under the window and behind that seat, and maybe on the flat around the seat swivel too.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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I would probably put a weep hole where the water sits so that it drains back to the bilge pump. Use a drill and then a round file to make sure the hole is as low as needed without penetrating the deck. Put a piece of floor grate in the seat box so that it can be used for semi-dry storage. The problem seems to be that the water is trapped. I use that area for food storage. Anything that really needs to stay dry, like clothes and TP (especially TP), is in dry bags.
 
Now of course it's not going to rain for a while, but I'm ready with paper, etc.:)

Marco, there's already a weep hole there, although not as low as necessary, we could put one in lower. But that doesn't answer the question of where it's coming from. After the last rain, we wiped it up, and now it's dry as a bone. And, I was happy that after I washed it down, there wasn't any moisture the next day - I was afraid of a slow leak from somewhere that would take time to seep in. In the last few months, we've taken off the rub rails and replaced rivets with s/s with 4200, taken off the top handrails, and 4200. When it rains, the entire bow and v-berth area are entirely dry (sometimes a bit of surface moisture from condensation). There's been no moisture coming down from the windows. The only thing I can think of is that it's traveling from the transom, but that would be up hill, and we checked out and filled holes someone had put in up there for the battery box.

Just a mystery at this point. I'm hoping at this point that it's just condensation that wants to collect at that point, but we'll see when we put up paper during the next rains.
 
It turns out the water was coming from one of the rub rail rivets we had replaced with a s/s through bolt, apparently we hadn't sealed it enough with 4200. About 3 months ago, we had replaced various rivets, instead of removing and redoing the whole rail. At the time, I looked at the various posts about rub rails, and I didn't see much about a bedding compound to seal the whole rub rail? For now, we're going to reseal that bolt, but want to redo the whole thing later this summer. Any ideas on bedding compound? Or sealing the top lip of the rail where it meets the boat (doesn't seem like a good idea). Thanks for any advice! :) - Karen
 
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