Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 08:23AM Location: Suffolk Posts: 15
Has anyone any suggestions on how to keep an ENTZ watertight.? After about an hour or so of sailing in fairly breezy conditions my ENTZ is very close to submerged. I am assuming that the water is entering via the very poorly designed access hatch. The supplied silicone sealing ring appears to be too small. I have attempted to make a better seal by applying a small bead of silicone bathroom sealer to the inner part of the hatch. I don't know how successful this will be yet, as I havn,t tried it out. Just thought that someone else may have a similar problem and come up with a better seal.
Most of the kit boats have lots of small holes all over the deck so I suggest that you have a good look first and see if you can minimise any of them. As for the hatch the only thing you can do is tape it shut and that may mean that you have to fit a waterproof switch outside domewhere. You can use any waterproof tape or scrounge any offcuts of insignia cloth, from which we make deck patches and sail numbers, from a sailmaker, if there is one near to you, and cut your own. Very few boats are truly waterproof and keeping the water out is a constant challenge, so good luck.
Use vaseline, you can buy fairly decent sized pots of it and get your finger in and slop it around the hatch seal, also you can put this over some of the other holes and it provides a bit more protection. In micro magics water is a bit of a problem because the jib sheet lead is just in front of the mast, being short little boats they nose dive quite easily when the wind is up so when the bow goes under water is squirted in at high pressure through the hole. To stop this you can move all the exit holes to a sheltered position further aft and then run the sheets over the deck to an eye or block of some sort but this takes a bit of design and engineering...
Try the vaseline but also bath test the boat, i dont know what the hull deck join is like but it could be leaking there too or maybe the keel box is leaking.
In micro magics you can cure all these leaks with either a bit of cyano (super glue) or by mixing some ABS in acetone to make a thicker filler.
On the micro magic i used a bead of vaseline around the underside of the hull deck joint to see if that stopped the leak, it did so i repaired the joint and now its almost always dry after up to 3 hours of sailing.
Joined: Thu May 31 2007, 06:00PM Location: Falmouth Posts: 48
Don't know the layout of this boat but maybe you could put some deck patch material as use on race boats over the aperture then put the hatch over the top for esthetics.
As a last resort fill the hull with water (take out any non water proof electrics first) and tip the boat back and forward to see were the water comes out.
Joined: Wed Feb 06 2008, 06:11AM Location: Burton on Trent Posts: 278
David wrote ... As a last resort fill the hull with water (take out any non water proof electrics first) and tip the boat back and forward to see were the water comes out.
Would a better option be to either fix a tube into the hull through a patch and submerge the hull in the bath, then blow into the tube to see where any air comes out, or just push the boat under water to see if there are any air bubbles coming out.
