I have a 2016 SAN 230. I've had it for 6 years. It has always taken on a small amount of water but nothing significant. This year it began taken on more water. When I pulled it out of the water, I seen water coming from the dripless seal. I dropped it off to have it replaced. The service department called and said it isn't my dripless seal, it's my center ballast hard box that is leaking. I'll add they want $3k to replace it. If I do not fill my ballast and my boat takes on water, I can't think of how a ballast hard box leak could could cause that. Am I missing something or have they completely misdiagnosed the primary issue?
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My thoughts.....- Dripless seal - The dripless seal will "leak" water when you pull the boat out of the water by design. The seal is lubricated by a line going from the boat's raw water cooling system to the seal. The system will drain via that port. This is normal.
- Ballast Tank - A cracked ballast tank is not that unusual and depending on where it's cracked (and probably regardless of where it's cracked) should be addressed as it's probably not going to get better and there's a significant amount of water there that you don't want in your bilge should it let loose. Depending how access is to the tank $3K doesn't sound out of line. Even the ones you can get to easily can be a PITA to deal with.
- Wet/dry bilge - I've had dry inboards and wet inboards that I've spent untold hours trying to figure out where the water was coming from. In general, it's not unusual for water to accumulate inn the bilge on an inboard/vDrive especially if you're surfing or entertaining with multiple guests getting in and out of the water. Everything is designed to drain to the bilge and that includes items like coolers, cockpit drains, seat bases and any other item that has a drain designed in it. The blower vents typically located on the stern or hull sides are hot spots for water intrusion and will typically have drains built into them so water doesn't end up in the blower motor. A listing boat set up for surfing or stops where water hits the transom are both situations where water intrusion can occur in these vents. I've also seen water intrusion at the deck/hull joint during surfing when the boat is either listed or over ballasted and thus exposing that seam for water intrusion.
My track record on eliminating 100% of my wet bilge boat was fair at best. The bend rudder shaft definitely helped but I was taking on a small amount of water from somewhere that I was never completely able to resolve the source. How crazy you get running a wet bilge down for me depends on how bad the leak is. If we're talking a gallon at the end of the day I may try running it down between sets or while cleaning the boat but I'm not going to lose my mind over it. 20 gallons on the other hand (like my bent rudder shaft was leaking) and you have my attention. You may have better luck but sometimes you just get a wet boat where the juice in resolving it just isn't worth the squeeze in effort to resolve it.
Best of luck with your efforts, let us know how you make out...... -
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Thanks for all the info. I guess my specific question is about the ballast tank. If my "leaky" ballast are empty and the boat is sitting in the water, will the boat take on water from the ballast? This is the part that I don't follow.Comment
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Possibly as the tanks never really empty completely. It would also depend on the crack and where it's located. If it's low and in at the back of the tank then I would suspect yes. If it's high and at the front of the tank, I would doubt it.Comment
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I guess my thinking is that a small crack in the tank will not cause it to take water in from the lake while the boat is sitting in the water completely shut off.Comment
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