First thing, I lightly sanded the window trim, then applied another coat of varnish to all pieces.  These trim pieces would be ready for reinstallation after the weekend.

I installed a new gasket on the forward hatch, keeping it continuous at the corners with a small relief cut on the inside edge to allow the bend.  The new self-adhesive gasket material was 5/8″ x 3/8″, with a hollow center that allowed for ample compression.  I made the seam in the gasket at the center of the aft edge of the hatch.

Next, I cut and installed new gasket material in the opening ports.  The new rubber material was 5/16″ in both dimensions, with a slightly rounded top edge, and fit well in the gasket groove.  The gasket featured a hollow center to allow for compression, and seemed to offer good resistance and sealing when I closed the port, with gasket material visible from the outside when the port was dogged down.

 

After an appointment away from the shop, I got back to work on the deadlight opening, removing the clamps and lightly sanding as needed to clean up any excess and cured epoxy.  The opening was now ready for reinstallation of trim and lens as soon as the remaining parts were ready.

To that end, I finished up prep work on the last two pieces of deadlight trim, which I’d had to lightly glue to fix some splits, then I applied the first of a couple coats of varnish to all the trim pieces.  The interior pieces just needed sprucing up before reinstallation, and I wanted a couple good coats on the exterior trim for protection before I installed the deadlight with sealant.

I removed the forward hatch so I could replace the gasket and work on the minor modification to the hasp setup.  Removal was a simple matter of removing the hinge screws from the hatch frame.  Once on the bench, I removed the old gasket and adhesive to prepare for the new gasket when it arrived.  Then, I removed the block securing the hasp latch so I could trim it slightly as needed to ensure a more positive seal around the hatch.

Now I turned to brightwork preparation.  I started with various small parts I’d accumulated on the bench, including the forward hatch, companionway boards, and the tiller.  I gave these all a sanding with 220 grit to prepare for maintenance coats of varnish.

I spent the remainder of the day working on the brightwork on deck, sanding the existing coating with 120 grit with a sanding block and by hand to prepare the surface for probably two or three maintenance coats of fresh varnish; I chose this grit because I thought the old coating needed a more aggressive approach to surface preparation given its condition and the overall situation.  The wood beneath the old coating had been heavily weathered and neglected when this owner bought the boat, and there remained plenty of grain texture in most of the wood, so the goal of this sanding session was not to correct that which could not be corrected, but only to prepare the relatively old varnish coating well for maintenance coats over the top.  Several areas where there were chips or flakes would require a couple early coats of touch-up varnish before getting to the full coats on all areas.  I did my best to sand out existing drips in the old coating, but resisted the urge to take such corrections too far as I didn’t want to sand through the old varnish.

By the end of the day, I’d made it around the boat sanding everything I could reach from the staging, including the toerails, outside coamings, and cabin trunk.  I left the cabin trunk immediately around the starboard forward deadlight alone for now, as I wanted the old coating to be intact when I reinstalled and bedded the window and trim soon, but once that was done I’d finish up the sanding there.

Picking up where I left off, I worked to remove the glass lens from the deadlight frame.  The glass was a close fit all the way around, leaving little room to cut away the sealant and begin to pry the lens out, so it took some time to carefully work my way in through the sealant from both sides of the frame, cutting with a knife and using a putty knife to help pull out strips of sealant when possible.  Eventually, after several back-and-forth trips between inside and outside, I succeeded in freeing the glass without damage.

This left the inside trim (minus the vertical aft piece, which I’d removed earlier) in place and with plenty of sealant still holding it.  Most of the external sealant had stuck to the glass when I removed it, but there remained a film on the teak cabin side as well.

I’d already removed the screws securing the interior trim at the start of the project, so now it just took a bit more cutting and careful prying to remove the rest of the trim.

I cleaned up the opening and environs by scraping off the bulk of the old sealant, then sanding off the rest, leaving the rim of the opening clean and ready for new installation when the time came.

There was some looseness and a gap between the fiberglass cabinside and the interior and exterior teak veneers, and I thought it would help make the new installation watertight if I filled these voids to eliminate that potential passage of water and ensure a good seal otherwise.   So after finishing up the cleaning and then solvent washing the area, I masked around the opening on both sides to avoid undue messes, then forced some thickened epoxy adhesive into the gaps all around, and smoothed it over the rim of the area as needed.  I clamped the sections all around, and used some tape at the top edge to help resecure a thin strip of the exterior teak cabin side that had come loose during removal efforts.

Next, I scraped and cleaned away the sealant remnants from the glass deadlight lens, and the interior and exterior trim pieces, sanding the faying areas clean and lightly sanding the varnished exposed sides to prepare for new varnish before installation.  Two of the trim pieces had minor splits and are out of the photo being glued.

During a phone conference, the owner mentioned additional concerns over past leakage through the forward hatch and on the port side, and this prompted me to prepare for another water test to see if indeed I could find a way to get water to come through the forward hatch; I’d frankly been surprised that it seemed watertight before, though the video evidence of the first test was clear.

Because the two opening ports in the main cabin leaked through the seals when dogged down, with new gasket material now on hand I thought I’d install the new gaskets now, before I water tested the forward hatch, so that I could see if the ports were now leak-free.  I’d ordered new gasket based on what was visible around the ports, but when I removed the existing gasket, I was surprised to find another gasket beneath:  a more typical square gasket located in a groove in the port body.  The gasket that had been visible, and which I thought was the entire seal, was apparently a stopgap measure to enhance a non-performing square gasket.  I’d thought the visible gasket had seemed unconventional, having been expecting more of what I eventually uncovered.

The square gasket installed didn’t seem to offer any resistance to the port when closed, and was quite firm and non-compressible; it was a solid gasket, without a hole through the center to aid compressibility.  It was a typical 5/16″ square gasket, the type found in many port bodies.  So having determined its existence, I ordered some replacement prospects; the material I really wanted was out of stock with no information on availability, so I located a couple similar products that I hoped would be the ticket.

Now, I turned on my hose again and aggressively sprayed the forward hatch again, this time in a way to force a leak even if it didn’t want to.  I also focused the torrent all around the hatch where it met the deck, as the owner had raised this as a leak possibility too.  With a camera set up inside, and dry towels to catch and highlight the leakage, this time I found a solid leak on the forward half of the starboard edge of the hatch, right where it had originally seemed not to be sealing tightly during my first inspection.  Why it didn’t leak during my first test is a mystery, but it definitely leaked now; the other portions of the hatch, subjected to similar spray, did not leak.

Upon closer inspection now, with the hatch open, I found that the corners–particularly the starboard forward corner–of the gasket were mitered and not continuous where they turned the corners (or, if they had been, they were no longer).  So there was a good gap in the gasket at that corner, which certainly could account for the leakage.  That, along with the fact that the hold-down clamp wasn’t quite as tight as it could be, and didn’t adequately compress the gasket, certainly would allow leaks.

To solve this, I ordered new gasket material to replace the old, and also planned to slightly modify the clamping setup.  The fixed portion of the latch, located on the interior of the hatch frame, was mounted as low as it could go, but the corresponding part on the hatch top itself was mounted to a wooden riser block, and I thought if I could slightly trim down the block, I’d be able to increase clamping pressure when the latch was closed.  The block appeared to be mounted with screws, so hopefully it would be easy to remove and modify.

This time, I also water-tested the port deadlights, which I’d not done previously since I’d not been aware that leaks had been happening on the port side; my notes referred only to the starboard side, opening ports, and forward hatch.  But the owner had let me know that there had been some water on the port berth as well, and while it may have come from the non-sealing opening port, now I wanted to test the deadlights too and hope that they proved watertight.  I did not find evidence of leakage from the deadlights, though water did come in through the now-ungasketed opening port.

Now that I’d determined the apparent source of the deck leak–the forward deadlight on the starboard side–I moved on with the repair, starting with the exterior deadlight trim.  I’d first started taking trim off from the inside, hoping to avoid disturbing the well varnished-in trim on the outside, but the nature of the deadlight’s assembly was such that removal of the trim and glass from outside was required.

The good news was that the owner had removed and reinstalled all these pieces and parts during his restoration, but even that was now many years past and, as with most things, not knowing exactly what I’d find as I dug into it was the hardest part.

The teak trim over the glass deadlight was bunged in place, presumably with screws beneath the bungs.  So I started by carefully drilling out one of the bungs, eventually revealing the screw beneath.  It took a while to determine what sort of screw it was–a slotted bronze head–so I could finally clean out the slot and remove the screw.  I was surprised to find that the fastener was a 3/4″ machine screw, not a wood screw–apparently because the actual structure of the cabin trunk was fiberglass, not wood, beneath the exterior and interior veneer paneling.  It was not easy to remove the screw, but an impact gun set on its lowest level helped break it free and spin it out.

The first screw had taken roughly an hour to remove, all told, and with 16 screws remaining around the deadlight, I feared I might never get to the last one.  Fortunately, now that I had a better sense of what was what, the remaining three screws on the forward trim piece came out more quickly, and soon I pried off the trim.  This revealed the edge of the glass lens near the forward edge of the opening; however, the lens sat well below the surface of the surrounding wood, meaning that a lot of sealant had been required between the trim–which ostensibly pinned and sealed the lens in place–and the lens itself.

Next, I removed the top section of trim, with no particular issues in removal.  Here, I found the glass lens was nearly 1/2″ below the opening in the cabin side, a very large gap, and the sealant had many voids and pockets that may have contributed to the leakage seen, even though the seal here was good enough that none of the water from the leak test entered the boat from the window itself–all the leakage was channeled somehow down around the window to where it finally came out above the berth.  Given the state of the sealant here, it made more sense.

In this manner I continued with the remaining two trim pieces which, along with some unrelated delays from other business, ate up the rest of the afternoon and, as the process drew out with various difficulties, I wasn’t sure if I’d meet my goal of removing all the trim today.  Two of the screws at the bottom aft corner fought removal by normal means, forcing me to drill out their heads so I could remove the trim, and then the long bottom piece of trim turned out to be extremely well-adhered, making its removal a tedious and nail-biting battle between careful prying progress and risking damage to the trim.  Eventually I prevailed, but by then it was so late in the day, and the process had been so frustrating and tiring, that I elected to leave the glass lens in place for now, not daring to try and remove it till I was fresh again.

 

I first came to know the boat that became Miss Helen, and her owner, more than 20 years ago.  At the time, I was doing some marine surveys, and was hired to look at this 1967 Frisco Flyer, which had been abandoned in a small boatyard out on Vinalhaven Island, ME.  I traveled out to the island with the eventual owner to inspect the boat; the boat was generally sound, but had been neglected for many years, and required a major overhaul.  The owner’s family had a property on the island, which is how he came to find the boat.

The owner took the boat, now on a new trailer, back to Wyoming, where he lived, and spent 10 or more years restoring her before enjoying sailing her in Montana for several seasons.  But recently be brought the boat back to Vinalhaven to sail in the summers, and this year left her with me to look into a nagging deck leak problem, among some other small maintenance chores.

I began the project as usual by repositioning the boat on her trailer more in the center of the shop (I’d had her pressed to one side for storage during most of the winter) and setting up staging to ease deck access.

The owner reported that the deck leaked directly over the starboard berth–his wife’s berth, as it happened–but he was not sure from whence it came.  So my plan was to flood this area with water to recreate the leak, and then take it from there to figure out the cause.  The deadlights were an obvious candidate, but the owner wasn’t sure if some of his deck work might have left an opening for leakage as well, and had mentioned his worries about the seam where the decking met the cabin trunk, as well as some other possibilities.

In the cabin, I started by removing a piece of trim at the lower edge of the cabin trunk, removal of which would expose the bottom edge of the wooden veneer and the deck edge.  The trim, which had been removed during the owner’s project, was secured now with round-head bronze screws, making removal straightforward.

Next, I set up a hose and flooded the area with a heavy shower spray for some time, which definitely succeeded in creating the leak below.  The leak dripped from a consistent point just below the forward edge of the forward deadlight.

The owner also mentioned concerns about the forward hatch, so I also spent some time flooding this area, but could not create a leak around the hatch.  That’s a good outcome.

There were two opening ports in the main cabin, and the owner mentioned leakage there as well; indeed, both leaked when flooded, but it turned out the port side had been not dogged down tightly.  However, the design of these ports held water in the spigot, against the seal, and the seal installed appeared to have been indelibly compressed by the port frame, causing a minor drip even when the ports were dogged down tightly, as the spigot was angled inwards and could not drain fully.  It’s asking a lot of any port seal to stand up to a constant pool of water even under perfect circumstances, but after inspecting the seal I thought I’d try replacing it with something new and see how it performed.

Having now created the leaks, it was time to get more scientific about figuring out where the leak came from.  First, I wanted to eliminate the deck itself as a candidate, if possible, so I set up my hose to flood only the deck itself, not the deadlights, to see if the leak continued.  Happily, there was no interior leak with this setup, which meant the unsavory task of trying to repair the decks or cabin trunk seam would not be necessary.

Since the position of the leak inside was consistent, and there didn’t seem to be multiple leaks, it seemed that the forward deadlight was the culprit.  Not sure how these were assembled or sealed, and with the exterior trim bunged and heavily varnished into place, I chose to start carefully with the interior trim to see if its removal would allow the deadlight to be disassembled.  But after removing the after L-shaped vertical piece of trim with some difficulty, it was immediately clear that the lens of the deadlight was actually secured against the interior trim, as I could see the exposed edge of the glass lens inside the newly-exposed opening (the point of the putty knife is directly on the edge of the glass).  So it looked like I’d have to remove the exterior trim in order to free the lens and work towards rebedding the entire deadlight–including the interior trim/frame, but the remaining three pieces would have to await removal of the outer trim and lens.