Aegir-Ran was going to splash last Monday. After the trailer was in the water, I checked the seacocks and learned one of them was leaking, so it was back to the hard to replace it. After grinding off the through-hull, I found it was mounted with what looked like plummer’s putty. Furthermore, the backing plate had to be replaced as the caulking that had been used to mount it had decayed. A new backing plate was fabricated out of Starboard and it was mounted with carbosil. The hole in the hull was glassed over, a new hole was drilled, and the new through-hull was seated with 5200 caulking. As the seacock was an inlet for the head, a cover was mounted over the through-hull.
As I had to wait a couple of days for the caulking to cure, I provisioned the boat and had 85 gallons of water with a plan to splash (again) on Thursday. However, when the water was siphoned into the two tanks, I found both were leaking. This was the first time the tanks had been filled to capacity since they were fiberglassed last summer. The leaking stopped after about 25% of the water had drained from the forward tank and about 5% had drained from the aft tank. This indicated the holes were near the top of the tanks. The water was drained from the two tanks, the baffles were cut out, and the tanks were examined. Both tanks exhibited areas that were not properly finished.
The person who originally did the fiberglassing acknowledged the work was sub-standard and he will fix the tanks starting tomorrow. I should be able to splash later this week.
While it is disappointing to not be in the water, it is fortunate the problems were identified when they could be addressed, and not for example 2000 miles offshore.
