Bedwetting or leaks?

For years I have been fighting a couple of drops of water under one of the beds in the aft starboard cabin. It was one of those irritating cases where for months it didn’t show itself, and then suddenly there it was again. As it rains all the time here, Brest (Brittany, France) is the ideal place to trace the leaks in your boat. You're probably thinking ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ The answer to this is that one drop of water on a boat can cause a load of problems. A simple example is that it can cause failure of the electronics on board, so that your automatic pilot cannot be used. The automatic pilot is crucial on a long passage as if it does not work, you have to hand steer the whole way. Apart from this, if the drops are salt water, they will absorb damp and condensation, and rot your woodwork. With her classic wood interior, this is deadly for the Morgan.

The consequences of leaks can be so bad that through electrolysis (the rotting of steel by electricity, friction being created by two metals and water) the fastening of the stays rust, ultimately leading to the masts going overboard. Leaks are thus serious business, and each drop must be taken seriously. Searching for a leak is a frustrating task. It takes a lot of time, and you often look in the wrong places. Water will spread until it finds an outlet, so that drops found at the stern of the Morgan could be caused by a leak in the bow. Determination seems to help. After months of searching for the cause of the leak in the aft starboard cabin, I finally ripped out the lining of the cabin and found the leak: it was a small wiring hole in one of the stringers (ribs) of the boat. These stringers form a sort of ‘maze’ throughout the Morgan, strengthening her. Now that I had found the leak in one of the stringers, I only needed to concentrate on a pair of screws that came through the deck. It appeared that in heavy rain a drop of water had run down one of the screws in one of the stringers, and showed itself in the cabin. What a relief. A bit of kit and ‘my baby is dry.’