Rain, rain and the malevolence of leaks from above.

Old wood boats leak.  From below and above.  Out here in Northern California, were we leave our boats in the water all year around, this truth hasn't been as apparent the last few years.  The multi year drought has deceived us.   

One might think leaks from below are the more threatening.  And they can be.  But psychologically, they are not particularly worrisome.  All my life I have gone out on boats that leak from below.  Some really leak.  Like water over your ankles after a long beat upwind in San Francisco's summer wind and chop.   But leaks from below are orderly in a way.  We expect them.  All that pressure trying to pushing water in make leaks progress from weeps to dips to flows and ultimately gushers.  The origin of the leaks is usually easy to hunt down and evaluate. 

But leaks from above have an madding insidiousness.  The culprits are gravity and the cohesion of water.  While the great Mystery Spot of Santa Cruz, where water is reported to run up hill, may be just a tourist trap, I swear that water can defy gravity.  It comes in from above and seems to meander and duck, run and shimmy around the beams and runners until it appears as a melancholy drip, drip, drip.   

My leak tracking tools are a flashlight and paper towel. Dab dry what seam of water is visible from the drip, shine a light on it and see from where it starts to swell.  Stop it in its tracks and start again.  Many go hiding along the backside of a a beam or flatten out along a broad surface.  And in true defiance to physics, somehow, the source never seems to provide nearly as much water as its final dip. 

And the there is never just a hole or something to plug.  It's in the seams.  Of course they appear all well to the eye and don't give any clue as to where exactly they are letting the water in.  To stop the leaking means to pull up whole sections of trim.  Drip, drip, drip.