Leaks & Tweets

Rain having very much stopped play for the last week or so, we have been hunkering down in the boat to wait out the bad weather.  But even minding your own business a lot can happen about the place - Mum accidentally decapitated our chimney after a gust of wind caught a ladder, one of our cats has mites clustering on her absurdly luxurious ears, and the long-standing problem of the tide quite literally coming in got a bit worse.

With an unusual amount of trickling and for want of a better word squirting coming from under one of the bunks, we took the top off and found something that made us rather uneasy.


A look down into the ancient-looking parts of the boat that are ever present beneath the relatively modern woodwork.

Below is a more bird's eye view - using my brilliant picture editing skills I have circled the issue, a rotten part of the wood that is
letting water seep in. 

The light brown gash at the right is where it's emanating from.

Here is a short video to show it in action:

Watch here

Fortunately this only appeared to be a small section but it is a source of confusion to us - the salt water should be preserving the wood, so the cause of the rot is anyone's guess at present.  This leak had to be held back as a matter of urgency, and there was a surprisingly simple solution for this.

In this unnecessarily moodily-lit shot, I have cut a section of foam rubber into a conveniently-sized cube.  We have a big supply that was intended for use as seat cushions, but this never happened, and it now takes a more practical role bunging up leaks.

All we have to do is push it in and give it a poke with an implement, taking care not to jab the wood itself.  Though wooden boats are much trickier to protect against water, as they are lots of planks tarred together rather than a self-contained hull, you can plug things up using anything from an old t-shirt (or in one emergency situation the new one off my back) to towels (evidence of which can be seen top left of shot).  I still envy the owners of metal barges and canal boats, who can put a shoe or something over a hole when it appears!

Here is a further image of the underfloor area.



A mighty section of metal ballast helps prop up the floorboards.  As mentioned,
much of our stone ballast is on deck, removed so we could investigate leaks.  Hopefully we
will be able to put it back there soon.  Also there are the frames forming the ribcage of
the boat, coated in creek mud.  Oh and my Mum's shoe, which she uses to clean the carpet
(don't ask).


In a previous posting I talked about tingles, sections of lead that can be nailed onto problem seams.  Here is one I exhumed, caked in muck.  Once attached, one of these can hold the water at bay for approximately a year.

On a more contemporary note, I am now on Twitter.  Actually I joined around 2 years ago but couldn't get my head around it - however, I am now on better terms with it, and will be Tweeting details of blog updates on there.  Do follow me if you feel inclined -

Twitter Link