by DigitalMechanic » Mon Jun 27, 2016 12:28 pm
You are getting gypped. I usually get a 5 gallon bucket's worth of sea water with every sail I take, lol. Well I used to, lol. So first I will say that you should pull that plug and then tilt the front of the boat up as far as you can on the trailer. Then tell us how much water really comes out of there. I know that I will only get a little bit of water out unless I tilt the trailer and push all the water in the boat back to the plug in the transom. I usually just take the little front wheel of the tralier and set it on a upside down 5 gallon bucket. Then let it sit for a while so all the water drips out the plug. There are also 2 inspection ports in the cockpit floor up near the cuddy on most models DSII and later. If you open those up it will help dry out the inside of the hull (especially on a hot day it happens in a couple of hours).
So, that will help you get the water out. Keeping it from getting in is another story. There are 2 locations I can think to check right away....
1. The downhaul line on the centerboard trunk. On some boats I believe there is a gap between the outer hull and the inner-cuddy part of the hole in the centerboard trunk. You should be able to slide the plug out that is in the hole (in the cuddy) and see if you have this problem. I believe some have re-engineered that with a PVC pipe fitting and nipple to seal the space between the CB trunk and outer hull. Also, the nipple minimizes the amount of water that can squirt into the cuddy once that area is sealed. Fortunately on my boat, this hole has a solid wall throughout. Maybe a previous owner glassed it in, or O'Day corrected the problem by 1976?
2. This is where I was able to stop a lot of my leak problem, but not all of it. Still working on finding more leak spots. Go ahead and pull that bailer if you can. The original one was metal, but I presume that the boat does not have the original bailer on it. It has probably been replaced at some point with a white plastic bailer. If so, you should be able wrench it apart. Just use a wrench to twist the part in the sump. The top part of the bailer (in the sump) screws into the bottom part of the bailer under the boat, through a hole in the boat. That is where the problem may be.
A. When I put my bailer back together, I used teflon tape to seal the threads.
B. The ball in my bailer is gone and so was one of the pins. I did not care about the ball, as my boat rests on a trailer and not a mooring where it needs to self bail. So, I pulled the remaining pin out of the bailer and sealed both pin holes with a dab 3M 5200.
C. The hole in the hull that the bailer goes through... on my boat was no longer symmetrical, lol. The edges of that hole have taken another shape, a crooked circle looking hole. Thus the little rubber ring that is supposed to seal the hole... well that ain't going to work. So, when I put the bailer back together, I went around the outsider edge of the bottom of the bailer (under the boat) with caulk. If you sealed the place the pins were in the bailer, sealed the threads with teflon tape, and you caulk the edges of the bottom of the bailer, you now should have no remaining way for water to enter the boat through the bailer.... In theory, lol
After I performing the above maintenance on my bailer I saw a lot less water in the hull after my sails. But there is still some water coming in from somewhere else, but very little.
Also, you might have rain water in there. The inspection ports in the cockpit floor will probably be a little leaky. This is easy to identify. Just pull the plug after a rain and tilt the trailer to see if any water comes out. If so, you might try and re-seal the inspection ports.