We’re having serious water problems lately. First, our bimini leaks like a sieve, when it rains there isn’t a dry spot in the cockpit. Then, we open the locker with our starting battery, and find that it is full of water, and water is still coming in! We’re taking on water!

Our bimini has some serious water issues – water seeps right in, it doesn’t stop the rain at all. We bought some waterproofing stuff for Sunbrella. Step one of that process is cleaning all the Sunbrella (bimini and cockpit cushions), so Kyle got started on that.

We also have a drainage area right in front of the sliding door. There’s a mat covering the floor there, but it feels a little bit like stepping on Lego in barefeet. So we bought some outdoor flooring at IKEA and Kyle set to work replacing that.

With all this cold weather, we have some serious condensation issues in our berth, so I pulled all the cushions out of that to make sure we weren’t starting a colony of mold or mildew. When I pulled the cushions out I saw a new locker that we hadn’t explored and asked “What’s in there?”

I’ll tell you what’s in there: our starboard starting battery…and about 8 inches of standing water. Hello, project creep.

Kyle siphoned that water into the bilge while I mixed up a solution to spray down the mold with (3 parts water to 1 part hydrogen peroxide, for the curious). I sprayed it down and then the internet said to wait for a few minutes before wiping it all down with soapy water. I got start on another project and a few minutes turned into an hour or so. When I got back to the locker…it was filling up with water again! But now I could see where it was coming from: the stern locker where the steering mechanism and autopilot live. That locker was also completely full of water!

Cue the manual bilge pumping, the search for any additional leaks, checking the other hull and finding it in the same condition, more bilge pumping, and several expressions of “WTF?” End result? Hobbes is several hundred pounds lighter, now that we’re not carrying all that excess water in the stern. The transom steps are noticeably higher out of the water on both sides. She’ll sail much happier now.

We also had a leaking hatch right above the nav table, which is one of the worst places for a leak because we constantly leave electronics there. Kyle made a cork seal and hopefully that stops leaking.

I swear our lives had no drama before we bought a boat, but lately it’s been boat fires and water leaks.

On Sunday, Kyle finished waterproofing the bimini and cockpit cushions while I worked on some blog stuff. Pretty successful weekend, I’d say. And we capped it all off with a gorgeous sunset. It’s red, which is a warning of some sort but I’m not salty enough to know what.