keel dripping

[psherwood]

Late yesterday I discovered to my horror a slow drip of what appears to
be diesel fuel, or watery diesel, from the aftermost half or so along
the bottom edge of my boat's keel. (The boat's on the hard in the Marina
San Carlos work area.) The liquid's not dripping as a leaky faucet might
but rather oozing slowly out of an area about 6" or 10" long, pretty
much in the center of the bottom keel edge. Eventually enough liquid
accumulates to form a drop.

I've scrutinized every fuel-related area I can get to and have found
nothing unusual. Of course, it's tough to see much of the fuel tanks
other than the tops; checking more thoroughly will require cutting away
big pieces of the interior. Maybe one of the copper fuel lines has
cracked and I just haven't yet found the path the leak is taking into
the bilge.

The bilge looks like its usual untidy self, not filling up noticeably
with anything.

My approach right now is to have the boat lifted up a few more inches to
move the keel blocks out of the way and do a better inspection of the
keel bottom, then consider applying some 4200 to seal any hairline
cracks and glassing over that.

That's just a band-aid, of course, that doesn't address whether the
bilge might be leaking and how diesel fuel might be getting loose in the
first place.

This is, not to indulge in excessive understatement, a showstopper.
Beyond the above, I'm out of ideas. Has anyone dealt with this issue?
Any thoughts on how to figure out what's going on and what other repair
strategies might work?

TIA for any input.

Phil
s/v Cynosure
San Carlos, Sonora

[Larry Rovin]

Are you sure it is diesel? I had a similar-sounding drip from the same area of the keel that turned out to be from a mass of resin/punchings poured into the cavity behind the iron ballast casting. According to Bob Perry this should have been foam.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 30, 2022, at 10:28 PM, psherwood <p...@witanco.com> wrote:
>
> Late yesterday I discovered to my horror a slow drip of what appears to be diesel fuel, or watery diesel, from the aftermost half or so along the bottom edge of my boat's keel. (The boat's on the hard in the Marina San Carlos work area.) The liquid's not dripping as a leaky faucet might but rather oozing slowly out of an area about 6" or 10" long, pretty much in the center of the bottom keel edge. Eventually enough liquid accumulates to form a drop.

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[psherwood]

Not necessarily 100% sure. The liquid felt oily and had what I took to
be a diesely smell, though not as strong a smell as I had expected. A
couple of other people said it smelled diesely to them as well but are
not totally hard over on the notion. There's not enough of the stuff to
conclude anything about color.

Will investigate further. Good to challenge the assumption -- thanks for
that.

Phil

[Larry Rovin]

In our case, the "leak" was coming from the side of the keel, so we never really thought in terms of fuel. The yard started digging out until they hit the void filled with rusty punchings.

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[Brian Moloney]

Phil,
When I repowered and had the old Nanni out I was finally able to access that lower bilge. There was a crack in the floor, and I ended up cutting out the floor, to expose a space under it that was filled with awful smelling black liquid, from years of oil and who knows what leaking in there. Had to wear a respirator while I was upside down with my head in there cleaning it out. Created a new bilge floor up higher and filled the space with foam...Anyway, I bet that’s what is leaking through your keel.

Brian
1984 P40

Sent from my iPad

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[Guilherme Salgado]

Hi Phil,

Did you find out how the liquid was getting to the bottom of the keel and where it was coming from? 

Cheers, 

[Michael Moradzadeh]

The liquid in a fiberglass "blister" can be loaded with hydrocarbons and perhaps be mistaken for diesel. I wonder if perhaps there's some similar action happening in the glassing of your keel. It might make sense to drill into the leaking area to see what's to be found out.  Maybe take a bigger sample of the liquid, if possible, and save it to get looked at by some lab, or expert, or something.

Good luck!

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[psherwood]

I didn't come up with anything conclusive, but what Michael and/or Larry
(see farther down the thread) mention make sense. I ended up having the
affected fiberglass ground out and redone, with no Aha! moments or
discoveries. And as a sort of belt-and-suspenders move, also had the
bilge cleaned and resealed.

Phil

>...

[Keith York]

Hmm. I'm just seeing this. Cynosure is now PapaSierra (I bought it from  Phil not long after he made this initial post) and we were out of the water for a full month in October of that  year and I never noticed it - so I guess it worked.  The bilge, however, is not still clean.  'Mr. Perkins' is a beast of a leaker.

Good to hear from you Phil.  Hope you're well.  We (PS and I) are in La Paz now.  We've had a good year so far - 4 sea of cortez crossings, just getting miles under me, and trips north in the sea.