Banish BR wet locker misery

[Graham W]

I came across a company on the internet specialising in seals and bought a few metres of two types for the less than watertight lockers on my Bayraider. After much trial and error, I found that the following was the most effective in keeping water out:
1.  The outboard (horizontal) edge of the locker should have a seal strip where the bulb sticks out horizontally from the rim.  Vertically might seem to make more sense (the bulb sticking upwards at right angles to the rim) but I found that the locker would not shut.
2.  The inboard edges (three of them, two vertical, one horizontal) should be lined with a seal where the bulb sticks out at right angles to the rim.  For reasons that I do not understand, I found that most water was entering the lockers from the two lower corners of the rim (backwash?)
3.  It is not necessary to seal the fore and aft rims unless you think you are going to sink
4.  The seal company recommends that you glue the seals in place.  As the seal slots have tenacious metal jaws which fit over the rim, I am going to see if I can do without.  Their two-part waterproof adhesive is pretty toxic stuff, including toluene amongst other ingredients.

I have field-tested this combination with a powerful hose from every conceivable direction and not a drip has entered the lockers since installing the seals.  An added benefit is that if the locker lid accidentally falls shut, instead of a loud crash, it sounds more like the closing of a VW Golf door. Photo below.

[Craic]

Hi Graham,
surprisingly you seem to be the only other person here who minds and adresses the lee stowage locker filling with water. Surprisingly, because it is a general problem, and because it is of relevance for the stability and safety of the boat.

I must say I am a bit tired of this problem, I just had another wet locker misery yesterday when out in a good breeze and chop. There is quite enough to do for a singlehander sailing the boat in a breeze, and additionally bailing out the stowage compartments at sea is not as simple as it sounds, in those circumstances.

This sealing that you have done is out of reach for me. I would not know where to get the seal profiles from here where I am, and that toxic glue that you mention is nothing for the average amateur for sure.

May I recommend the yard doesn't leave this to the customers but itself seeks and finds a general solution for the possibility the stowage lockers filling up with a lot of water in adverse conditions, when it would matter seriously.

[Guy Rossey]

The first time I noticed the problem of water entering the locker was after a gust when I heard an explosion: nothing broken but one of the gas lifejackets in the locker filled with water had blown up.

I am interested in adopting the solution proposed by Graham, since the problem is there but can be solved.

Some questions and notes:

- Q: since the seal was purchased through the internet, could we have the references of the seal and company? They may be shipping anywhere. Thanks.

- Note: the adhesive one applies is in limited amounts and the toluene content in it , (one of) the solvent(s) used in the composition should be no problem in the open air. Maybe Sikaflex could be used here instead just as well.

- Note: the fact that water enters mainly from the lower corners of the rim (well observed!) is maybe due to the turbulences there when water is flushing out of the grove in addition to the fact that the vertical wall at this point, preventing water entry, is in gusts not at 90° but more horizontal at 45°,  or less.

Catchando Bay (BR)

[Colin Morley]

Thanks for this. I have not yet had the problem, and dont want to.

Please can you tell us where you got the seals from i.e. web address would be fine.

[Craic]

Graham,

I had another wet locker sail today. With minimum sail btw.

Been musing.: I think your seal solution is an improvement, and can work almost perfectly, but it is limited by the fastening of the lid hinges. The screws of the lid hinges on the gunnel airtank wall have precarious grip. I had to fix mine often, with limited and only temporary success each time.
From there I would say the yard would still have to do work on strengthening the hinges fastening to accommodate any such seal solution.

[Graham W]

The company is http://www.sealsdirect.co.uk/
and the two types of seal are:
ETS59 and
ETS58 (I cannot remember which was which).

The adhesive, which has been wholly unnecessary because of the strong grip of the seal metal jaws, is A262.

Claus, I have had no problems with the locker hinges so far.  Or with any further water ingress for that matter, so it is definitely worth doing.

[Craic]

... I have field-tested this combination with a powerful hose from every conceivable direction and not a drip has entered the lockers since installing the seals.  ...

Graham,
the really relevant test would be sailing well heeled with waves or green water coming in over the lee gunnel or with splashes of water flying in from the hard entry of the windward bow and landing on the lee locker, how much of that water would gush or drip into the lee stowage below. 

I had heard the argument that one does not need to sail with so much heel that the water on the lee lid will not drain into the cockpit but flow back into the stowage from the outside of the lid. That argument is not taking into account heavy weather situations where one cannot avoid it. You do not want to be caught in such weather out in the open and notice your lee stowage is filling with a lot of water.

The hinges,
i.e. the four screws fastening them to the gunnel airtank wall have to absorb the upward pushing force onto the lid from the seal underneath. Typically these hinges already come loose when a sheet or similar is accidentally caught between lid and seat underneath.

[Julian Swindell]

I'm not really affected by this. The one cockpit locker on my BayCruiser is definitely not watertight as I have a large hole in it for the fuel hose to come out of. But I wondered if making the cockpit lockers on the BayRaider fully watertight might not affect the boat's self righting ability from total inversion? If the cockpit lockers are watertight, they will effectively become large additional buoyancy tanks, which might stop the automatic tilting brought about by one side intentionally flooding. If there is a large, sealed chamber either side when the boat is upside down, it would be very stable in that position and hard to pull upright.

[Graham W]

the really relevant test would be sailing well heeled with waves or green water coming in over the lee gunnel or with splashes of water flying in from the hard entry of the windward bow and landing on the lee locker, how much of that water would gush or drip into the lee stowage below. 

I had heard the argument that one does not need to sail with so much heel that the water on the lee lid will not drain into the cockpit but flow back into the stowage from the outside of the lid. That argument is not taking into account heavy weather situations where one cannot avoid it. You do not want to be caught in such weather out in the open and notice your lee stowage is filling with a lot of water.

The hinges,
i.e. the four screws fastening them to the gunnel airtank wall have to absorb the upward pushing force onto the lid from the seal underneath. Typically these hinges already come loose when a sheet or similar is accidentally caught between lid and seat underneath.

Sailing on Lake Bala, you never really know what the wind is going to do next, both in speed and direction - hence the installation of the Tackticks wind system.  Since installing the locker seals, I have had some fairly hairy sails, with near capsize and plenty of spray coming over the bows.  No full waves yet but that will surely come on a sunny afternoon in Corfu. I was too busy trying not to capsize to notice what all this water was doing but I can say that none of it made it into the lockers.  If I do manage to ship full waves and/or capsize (I am planning to do a deliberate one in the warm Ionian Sea) I will report back what, if anything, happened.

I think that because I have deliberately used the wrong profile seal for the outboard edge (bulb sticking out horizontally from the rim instead of up at right angles), the hinges are under less strain, at least from the seals. I have managed to shut my sheets, ratchet blocks, padlocks and various other foreign bodies under the locker and so far no damage to the hinges.  I like David's idea of sheet pockets to keep all these items out of harm's way but all the commercially available ones are too deep to fit properly.

[Graham W]

If there is a large, sealed chamber either side when the boat is upside down, it would be very stable in that position and hard to pull upright.

I have not sealed the fore and aft rims of the lockers as it seemed unnecessary to prevent normal water ingress from rain, spray, cleaning etc. So if water needs to enter the lockers to help with righting, it can do so, albeit more slowly than before.  One for Matt, I think.

[Craic]

I was in a windy regatta today. Made 100 to 150 ltr. of water in the port stowage compartment in a very short time. This stowage compartment water filling is destabilising the boat. And this design fault is self-increasing; the more water is in the stowage, the lower the boat is in the water, and the more is the heel of the boat to the side of the filled stowage, and the more water is coming over the gunwhale.

It is an increasingly unsettling and distracting design fault as you sail and work hard in windy conditions in order to keep the boat safe, but see the situation deteriorate further and further. My sail today ended in a collision with another boat. The other boat was on port tack and did not watch out at all. I was probably distracted by this problem to watch out enough. My boat got demasted. Even to get the boat back out of the water onto the trailer was a big mess with all that water on one side which does not drain out as you retrieve the boat.

Swallowboats must tackle this problem, now. This problem has been known a long time, and it clearly compromises the seaworthiness of the boat. You are warned.

[Guy Rossey]

This must have been awkward, Claus.
In order to limit available space for water in the lockers, I fill them with closed polypropylene boxes which I use for storage. Avoids also exposure of the spare gas lifejackets to water.

A suggestion: one could in addition install a syphon low enough in the lockers so as to pump most of the water out. The outlet would go via a tube through the ballast to the sump.

Catchando Bay (BR)

[Graham W]

Message for Peter I

The message system doesn't seem to work for replies so here is mine:

Hi Peter

I ordered too much, not really being sure of what would fit where.  4m of ETS59 and 6m of ETS58. The problem is, I am unable to remember how much went where - the best idea is to look at my first post and the photo and measure the rims that I mention.

Good luck!

Graham

[Anthony Huggett]

On my (home built, plywood, unfinshed work in progress) BR17 the lockers have cutouts at the bottom to enable the water to drain out. Worst case when sailing heeled would be an inch or two in the bottom which would drain out again when she comes upright. But the lockers have a flat plywood top, not an overlapping arrangement, so cannot realistically be made watertight.

[Andrew Denman]

Anthony,

Instead of going with the standard ply hatches, we used a 100% watertight hatch on the seat lockers on the BR17.  We are also looking at using these as standard on the epoxy  ply BR20's. 





I thnk Matt is also looking at these for a trial.  Let me know if you want details.

regards,

Andrew