Progress...?

So, we have a sealed mid-deck, and the aft hatch leak is a thing of the past...

Phew!

'Discusion' on the next step was prolonged and heated; J wanted to get the timber back down and the deck 'finished' before moving on, whilst A preferred to attack each actual problem as it arose.
When the helm leak started to be a real nuisance - by which I mean water ingress from the forehead locker using the wiring to cause a significant drip in a moderate downpoor - J realised compromise was necessary, and so the timber went into storage, the sleeves were pushed up, and the top deck became the target of our efforts.

We first had to remove the rather anti-social seating - back to back doesn't encourage much chat, so we got rid - and thoughts fly as to what will follow; to be confirmed!!

Again we were so lucky that the stainless screws came up mostly without a fight - although given the state of some of them, the mind boggles as to what they've been through in the past!!!

We weren't quite ready to take down the mast, so we cut round that, but otherwise we stripped the deck of teak in a couple of days, and immediately identified the source of our problem:

These trawlers are delivered in two parts, with the fly bridge moulding to be attached after shipping. I guess maybe one in ten new owners might want to ship their boat to new waters, and to appease that minority, the fly bridge moulding is simply screwed into place and the seam is covered with a teak trim. The fly bridge is teaked entirely, effectively covering the interor seam of the molding.

The problem we had was that there was alot of water under the timber, which was making its way into the forehead locker under the seam, and then down the cable run to the helm and electrical panel... Yikes.

Having lifted the teak we sealed the inside seam with fibreglass tape and epoxy, effectively glassing on the forehead moulding permanantly and we were sure we'd nailed the problem....

That is, until it rained again - and we heard that awful 'drip' at the helm :-(

Quick! Put a pot under it!!

There was nothing for it, but to attack the exterior teak trim, and seal the moulding from the other side too - the gap was huge and an obvious source of a leak...
 

Once that was done, we waited for rain to test our work...

And waited...

And waited...

And before we had the proof we so desperately craved, the holidays were upon us - we hot footed it back to the UK to spend our first Crimbo there as a couple (J's first since 1998!) and to help the Howell's move house.

We left a pot under the leak and left our key with a friend - with strict instructions that if the leak was still there we didn't want to know about it so please just empty the bucket as necessary!!! 

In fact, we got a message to say that despite heavy rain, our drip receptacle remained empty, so score one for us 'vs' the leaks! Youpi!