Water in port rudder compartment

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chicagocat
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Re: Water in port rudder compartment

Post by chicagocat »

Thanks Sandy and Mike (and Terry earlier...we can't seem to get rid of you...),

I went to the boat today and took some pictures and I think I have some answers. The water that's getting into my "water tight" locker is definitely seawater. It was fairly dry when I left Milwaukee last week, and 12 hours later when I got to Chicago after some pretty rough sailing, I had probably 5 gal of water. The pics I took today are pretty revealing, I think. The first pic is of the compartment looking from the new inspection port on the rear step toward the bow. You can see the 2 tubes for the Yanmar exhaust fan as well as the inspection port which sits at the rear of the engine. More importantly, you can see the fiberglass tube that contains the rudder post.
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P1010236.JPG (134.48 KiB) Viewed 8878 times
The next picture is from the bow end looking aft. Here you can see the front end of the fiberglass tube. It pretty clearly has some cracking along a vertical seam on the part of the tube facing the bow of the boat. It seems to me that water must be being forced out of this crack into the compartment. So I think that some grinding, sanding and glassing is in order, and hopefully that will put and end to the matter. What do you guys think?
P1010228.JPG
P1010228.JPG (124.47 KiB) Viewed 8882 times
PDQ 36052 - 1996 LRC - "Anne Z" - Chicago
and 2001 PDQ 36 Classic (Tall Rig)- "Cat Tales" - Punta Gorda, FL
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Page 83
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Re: Water in port rudder compartment

Post by Page 83 »

That looks like a major project to me. Can you squirt some chalkline powder on the tube to isolate the leak? If its small enough to be a one-handed fix your in luck, you may not have to cut a big chunh of stairs out. I wish it were easy to remove the whole stair molding.
Sandy Daugherty "Page 83" PDQ 36026
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chicagocat
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Re: Water in port rudder compartment

Post by chicagocat »

Hi Sandy,
Actually, I'm a bit of an optimist about it. It's hard to tell from the pictures, especially for the folks who don't have the LRC version, but it's pretty easy to reach through the inspection port at the bow end of the compartment and reach the fiberglass tube. It's only about a foot in, and the tube is about 2 feet high. So I think that sanding and epoxy glass over the crack shouldn't be too bad. It'll require some contortion, but I think it can be done without any extra cutting. Also, it doesn't have to look pretty when I'm done, just strong, so epoxy seems like the right choice.

Thinking about how this happened, my guess is that water was somehow trapped in there over a winter. Then when the water froze, the tube cracked.
PDQ 36052 - 1996 LRC - "Anne Z" - Chicago
and 2001 PDQ 36 Classic (Tall Rig)- "Cat Tales" - Punta Gorda, FL
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GaryWizard
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Re: Water in port rudder compartment

Post by GaryWizard »

I too spent a lot of time bending & reaching & looking at my rudder post / tube / "watertight" compartment setup this past weekend. What I realized is that the rudders in the LRC actually come thru the hull at the very aft end of the engine compartment. There is a "rudder post tube" that goes to the very top of this compartment, but it does not look sealed at the top. Looking in the upper compartment where the rudder post comes up into the steering quadrant, there does look like a raised section with a seal of some sort just below the quadrant (picture 3)

One thing, I don;t think Inspiration was been through freezing weather. I can't say for sure, but the previous owner kept her in SW Fla or the Bahamas in the winters. Still, I see the crack(?) that ChicagoCat pointed out.

photo 1 is almost identical to what ChicagoCat saw.
looking aft thru the engine compartment inspection port
looking aft thru the engine compartment inspection port
PDQ36Rudder1.jpg (38.81 KiB) Viewed 8810 times
photo 2 is the tube looking forward from the steps - I was focused on the gap at the top - another note, I have regularly seen water leaking into the port engine compartment from the (black) tubes hat got thru the forward section of the bulkhead. Now I see where with a fair amount of water in the compartment, that it could seep around the tubes into the aft bilge.
looking from the stern forward
looking from the stern forward
PDQ36Rudder2.jpg (56.52 KiB) Viewed 8810 times
underside of steering quadrant
underside of steering quadrant
PDQ36Rudder3.jpg (37.02 KiB) Viewed 8812 times
To reiterate what Page 83 said, it was suggested to me to dust talcum powder all over & see where it's washed away. I did notice that after 2 weeks of sitting at the mooring (even with lots of boat traffic & wakes) that the compartments seem relatively dry. A fair difference from the trip from Miami where I took on 50+ gallons in the port hull after 8 hours in 4'-6' seas.

Gary
s/v Inspiration
PDQ 36 LRC #47
amytom
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Re: Water in port rudder compartment

Post by amytom »

We just finished our trip from Canaveral to Marathon and back. (Dry Tortugas was scrapped due to possible rough seas from Hurricane Alex)
We took a spare engine in the starboard aft compartment and the boat seemed a little heavy after loading up. We didn't think anything of it as we had the spare 9.9 and two red Hondas in the aft storage. When we returned and unloaded all the spares the starboard first step was still under under water. I took the wood decking out of the storage area and climbed in there to find about 50 gallons of seawater. The seawater level was above the water line, even while loaded down. After pumping out the boat came back up to the water line.

Looking at the pictures that Mike posted of his 32 I see ours is different. Where the deck flush with the quadrant goes all the way back to the steps on his; ours has about a one foot gap to the steps. That's where I was able to see and pump out the water. I'm not sure if there is a vertical wall separating the steering area from the aft step area or not. I'll have to climb a little further back and check.

As far as fixes go, depending on what I find:

1) How strong are the inspection ports? I'm hesitant to put one in the bulkhead between the under bunk storage and the rudder compartment unless they are reliable.

2) Has anyone installed automatic bilge pumps into these areas to reduce the problem instead of tearing the boat apart to correct the root cause?
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chicagocat
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Re: Water in port rudder compartment

Post by chicagocat »

PDQ1.jpg
Hi All,
I thought I'd finally follow up on this subject. I think that I've solved the problem. Unfortunately, the pics in the posts below aren't showing up in either Chrome or Safari for me, so hopefully they do for you. I've attached a pic I took a couple years ago in case.

The rudder post goes up through the sealed compartment and emerges in the rear deck lazerette. In the sealed compartment, the post is surrounded by a fiberglass casing (shown in picture). The fiberglass casing looks like it was made in 2 pieces and glassed together at a seam that faces the bow of the boat.
This seam has cracked. I think that water may get trapped in there and freeze and expand in the winter months, causing the cracking. I know that Terry and Bob's boat had this problem also, and they lived near Cleveland at the time...

Anyway, I installed an inspection port in the deck lazerette near the top of the rudder post (but not too close, you don't want to damage the rudder post casing). Then I was able to reach in and (messily) apply epoxy and cloth along the seam. I did this repair at the start of last season and have had no water in the compartment since.
PDQ 36052 - 1996 LRC - "Anne Z" - Chicago
and 2001 PDQ 36 Classic (Tall Rig)- "Cat Tales" - Punta Gorda, FL
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