Seams above the water line...

[snaiken]

As I write the title to this I realize the irony of yesterdays sail...
I'll try and keep it short. My boat, 27' carvel planked sailboat, sees more sun on one side than the other. I live in a pretty warm and dry place in the summer and wet and cold in the winter. On the side that sees the sun I see the planks starting to shrink which causes the seams to open a bit (in the winter it's just fine ). So when healed to that side it will take on water if it doesn't get sailed three times a week;). Now I'm aware of this and usually pay attention to it and a couple of times had water up to the floor boards. Well yesterday, without boring you all with the details, by the time someone said something to me (hey, you know there's some water in there...) there was WAY too much water in there.:eek::eek::eek: After some (well, a lot) of initial panic and bailing I started realizing that we didn't develop a hole and that it was just the water that came in through the seams above the water line. So we made it back just fine and the boats floating just fine and now things are drying out inside. But I think I need to fix this.
So my question is how would you guys go about it. I have some of the string type of cotton caulking and I'm sure that's the correct size for the what I need. I also have some seam sealer, can't think of the name but it's an interlux brand, red in color and made for below the water line. Can I use this or should I use something different for above the water line. So in short, I think I should sand the area to fair out the paint and cracks, put in the cotton string and put the seam sealer over that, let dry a day, sand, prime, paint and do my best to make it all match and fair etc. I'll post a picture in a minute. Any other suggestions?
I'm getting her ready to make the sail from east of Portland, OR on the Columbia River up to the wooden boat fest in PT. This will add a couple of days to my already long list of things to do before I leave but after yesterdays fiasco I think I should be proactive instead of waiting for it to swell along the way.:o Any help/suggestions would be very much apprecaited. Thanks!

[snaiken]

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u114/snaiken/CabinFronts1077.jpg
Ok, so it's not a problem specific photo but you can see the cracks in between the fenders. There are also some in front and behind that are not in the photo.

[StevenBauer]

Couldn't you just throw a couple of buckets of water along that side of the boat (inside) for a few days to swell her up? And back her in to the slip every other time so it doesn't keep happening? They even turn "Old Ironsides" every so often. ;)


Steven

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Sail her more... those seams don't look that bad... if she was heeled over on a weekly basis, she would swell those seams tight

[Concordia...41]

A. Turn the boat around

B. Turn the boat around

Seriously, I can't think of any good coming from caulking and puttying the seams on one side but not the other.

What if you move on to a larger boat soon? What will the next owner do in his slip / mooring ?

(I'm thinking that cute little boy I met is now a cute much larger toddler [and they will keep growing...:p]. Also, young cute young couples such as yourselves have been known to have more :)...)

SARAH's seams look about like that from the outside, but the interior just looks like tears running down and that wouldn't even show if someone :rolleyes: would get the ceiling back in the salon...

Did the traveler end up being any help?

[Jay Greer]

Is your boat the one that had some rot problems in the fwd end of the deck house a while back? I ask this because, if you are, I was very impressed by the way you attacked and cured the problem.
Anyway, dealing with the problem of multiple seam gaposyss can be maddening. Rotation of the hull is one way to keep balance between the shady and sunny sides. Bear in mind, that until the advent of more weather resistant paints, it was common place to glaze seams and paint topsides every spring. Certainly a boat needs to be sailed as well in order to keep the topsides swelled. I will look for you at the Wooden Boat Festival this year. Kirby paint as well as Interlux makes white oil based seam compounds for use above the water line.
Jay

[outofthenorm]

If your not sailing regularly, you could make up some nice hanging weather cloths to shade the topsides. Hang them on lanyards from the lifelines. A piece of 3/4 inch line sewed along the bottom will keep them weighted down. Sunbrella and a few grommets would do the trick.

- Norm

[S B]

Are you sure it's just the sun drying out one side of the boat? because if that is the case, the deck and other structures would suffer the same damage, and it is not apparent from the photo that this is happening.

[snaiken]

Thanks for all the replys. I didn't think much of the crack either until yesterday. I sailed for about 1 hour in 20-25 knots, tacking up a 2 mile wide river and by the time the water was brought to my attention it was 12-14 inches deep! Not good. I probably sail the boat 5-10 times a month. I have turned the boat some but to be honest the other side looks really good and I didn't want it to crack too. It's on the one side probably 85% of the time. The bucket of water idea would be a good one if I could get to the hull. But with the ceiling in place and the rest of the interior it's not possible. I have also thought about hanging a cloth over the side but wasn't convinced it would do much better than just the white colored hull. I'm also pretty certain that the sun is causing this. The deck is teak and doesn't seem to mind the hot weather and the cabin side does suffer a bit from the sun in the form of a particular crack that is more noticable in the summer. The cabin tops are white and holds up the the sun and heat pretty well. So I'll start turning the boat since that was the majority of opinions. But an hour of healed over sailing and at least a foot of water is not going to make my wife feel safe and secure;) especially with our two year old:eek:!
By the way, when I take a light and look into the cracks I see no caulking at all. It appears that the planks just butt clean up to each other. I could be wrong but that's what it looks like. The picture is from last fall and although it doesn't look a lot worse now, but maybe a little....

Margo, Van is two now and is turning into a toddler fast. We are planning a trip to the San Juans this summer with him. And I know what you mean about the bigger boat (although ours is just a good size for where we sail on the river)...it's probably in the future if we want to do any sailing farther away from home. We have another one in the oven, due around the New Year!

And Lew, yes that's the same boat with the rot in the cabin fronts. Thanks for the compliment and so fars it's all holding up real well. I'm doing my best to stay ahead of the maintenance game. Glad the boats close to me.

[snaiken]

Uh...I said Lew and I meant Jay....sorry

[Lew Barrett]

Jay forgives you, and I've been called worse:)

Agree with all of the above. The wood moves, seams open and close, and if you want to look Bristol fashion all the time, painting becomes an annual affair. It's my thought that the opening of the seams only proves she's a wooden boat. In time they all do that to a lesser or greater extent.

[StevenBauer]

Do you have a bilge pump? You can get a Rule 360 with switch for less than $40. Problem solved.


Steven

[snaiken]

I actually have two bilge pumps I think one is 800 gph and the other 500 gpm. They don't seem to work that great for some reason but they are only a year or two old. One may have been clogged up the whole time but I have fixed it.

[onobleboat]

Looks like a nice vessel, just caulk the damn seam, go on and sail her, don't get her into "museum shape" unless your going to put her in a Museum.

[S B]

Don't know how often you sail, but the plank on the open seam side are already being soaked on the inside. Does the boat tighten over night after use?

[John B]

I really don't think you should caulk it. It just needs a light cover to create some shade over it since its exposed one side all the time . Cheap cotton or some orchard shade cloth.. that perforated stuff.. something like that. Try it out with some old sheets or sails first.

[aindrans]

I'm relatively new to this wooden boat game but I'm learning fast. I had my wooden Vertue out of the water for most of 2007. One side was facing the sun for most of the day and the other was in shade. On the sunny side the seams opened and I cailked with linseed putty. On the shade side very little movement in the seams and therefore no caulking.

In the sumer the boat goes back in the water. the shady side is now exposed to the sun and the seams open up, but on the other side the seams close. Come winter the seams close up and I have putty oozing out. The auto bilge pump works and all is well. I sail hard and water will come in through the open seams but eventually they do close. She's a wooden boat!

[John B]

Its very normal to hang a drop of hessian cloth around a wooden boat to stop it drying out when its hauled and in the sun and the wind. Go back a few years when wooden boats were the norm and they all did it.

[snaiken]

Thanks again for the suggestions. John B, I'm going to try the cloth idea.
In the meantime I thought I'd try something a friend suggested. I went up to our local irrigation supply store and spent about $20 on a little misting system. Slick systems. I've never messed with them but in short (I'll post some pick this eve.) I took about a 15' length of 1/4 " tubing and inserted a bunch of tees and then about 4" pigtails off the tees to tiny little mister heads.
I was able to poke the mister heads over the ceiling boards to reach the interior of the hull and tape all into place. Turned it on and viola, a nice clean mist with out spraying the whole interior. It looks like it's an even mist running down the hull sides. I also noticed it coming out of the open seams on the outside. So I think it's getting where it needs to be.
I looked at the seams closer and if I were to calculate how much seam is open to the point where you can easily slide a credit card through them, I'd say in total about 30 ft. of open seam.
I put the mister system together in about 15 minutes and taped it where it needed to be. I can also easily adjust the line fore and aft to make sure it gets evenly wet. And I'll just take it out when I sail her.
So I'll let you know how it works. I didn't get a timer for it but the boats close and I'll just turn it on a few hours a day for a bit and see how it goes.

[pcford]

Its very normal to hang a drop of hessian cloth around a wooden boat to stop it drying out when its hauled and in the sun and the wind. Go back a few years when wooden boats were the norm and they all did it.


Translation from Kiwitalk to 'merican: hessian cloth: burlap.

I work on small boats...around twenty feet. I sometimes create an island of humidity around a boat by covering the boat and draping it to the floor. Then get a garbage can full of planer shavings. Run a hose in the garbage can til the shaving are saturated. Pour off any excess. Then spread the shavings under the boat.

An advantage to this is that it creates high humidity on _both_ sides of the planking.

Same process works for keeping the moisture content in bending oak up.