Unexpected Surprise. Water Ingress!

Some time ago we had a post about the way our Steelhead Davit was installed in 2009 during the commissioning of Sylken Sea. I won't go into that again here, we will just fast forward to the spring of 2026, probably April? I'm down in the lazarette and notice an ugly brown stain running down the hull from the port side into the bilge. Hmmm, I don't like the look of that. I then notice what appears to be a crack in the gelcoat on the bulkhead port side of centre and low on the bulkhead. I push on it with my finger, brown "tea" oozes out. Oh, Oh. Yep after drilling a few test holes I can confirm we have water ingress into the bulkhead. This is going to be a big repair. 

I start looking for a yard that I would be comfortable with to take this on. We find Tiffany Yachts in Burgess VA and I give them a call. After a chat with Laura we decide to bring them the boat and will leave it with them for nearly three months. We have a long laundry list of other work we need done but it's the bulkhead repair that worries us most. We really wont know what we are dealing with until we have Tiffany's start cutting into the bulkhead.

Drew was assigned to the task and he started by removing components including the exhaust system, davit and parts of the water maker. After cutting into the bulkhead and determining the extent of the damage it was confirmed that when the davit was installed the standpipe to cockpit sole connection which requires a 5" hole cut in the sole through the teak and the deck also cut into the bulkhead. Steelhead's installation manual's instructions state that all cutouts must be properly sealed, the installer Bullhead Marine in FL neglected this step. The water had been running down the inside of the stand pipe from the boat deck and entering the coring and the bulkhead rotting both.

Drew cut out all the soft bulkhead wood and the cockpit sole coring, replaced it and glassed it all back in. He did a really nice job and you really can't tell is was ever repaired. 

Cockpit sole from the underside with rotten core cut out. You can see the new plywood installed in the bulkhead before being glassed over. Note the cutout for the Davit.

Bulkhead with the rotten wood cut out