Bilge Leak - crack in bilge mast step

[Sdsailor]

Short update. Still not fixed. Rain and work had prevented me from getting into it. BUT! I tried drilling inspection ports into the box.  It was solid! Not rotted out. A good thing. So I'm thinking I'm going to dremel out the cracks to see how far the damage extends. I'm a little worried because one of the cracks estends to a keel bolt. It may be superficial, but we'll see. I won't forget to update the resolve. Thanks everyone.

[Sdsailor]

Hello All, update on my mast step crack.  The rain finally stopped in Southern California for me to dry out the bilge and get it over to the shipyard.

It appears it's the same problem all us early hulls have. Water rotted from the natural drainage of the mast.
I read KH3412's great write up on what he found and his beautiful repair.

With the metal plate support, i'm thinking glassing the cracks for this season won't be too big of a deal, as when i drilled through the box, dry dust came out.

thanks for everyone's help. i appreciate this forum.

[Sdsailor]

Update. The crack was repaired today. Reglassed. I had a rigging inspection and the bottom inspected. Dukes is nearly ready for our trip in 9 days. While they were in the bilge, I had them install a high water shelf to install a second pump as you guys suggested. Thanks everyone. I was trying to post pics but my phone pics are too big to upload here. I'll try to find a way to resize them.

[kh3412]

Enjoy your trip 😀

[KWKloeber]

To do it right on your device rather than download and size them -- If you email them to yourself there's usually an option (iPhone anyway) to choose the image size.

There cool mobile apps "resize it" and "Image Size" and "ViewXeif" (doesn't resize, but displays hidden info.)

Also, I've found if I upload 1-2 LARGE pix at a time, the forum extension will resize it.  If I do many LARGE files at once, the add-on chokes.