Makes my installation look pretty clean!
Just in case you thought all I did during the week was Web surf, I also started on the job of rebuilding the two teak hatches over the main saloon. A couple of months back I had resealed the bases and added some neoprene gasketing, which greatly diminished the leaks, but didn’t eliminate them. Small amounts of water were migrating to the inside of the frame and dripping into the cabin. Although the sealant around the plexiglass looked intact, obviously it wasn’t. The way the hatch had been designed and built, with the plexiglass inset into the top edge of the frame, any water making its way past the sealant would have to flow to the inside.
I decided to correct that problem by cutting off the rim on the top of the frame, leaving the top edge flat, and use a larger (and thicker) sheet of plex that would go all the way to the outside edge of the frame. That would make it simple to use the preferred butyl tape as the seal as well as make it much more likely that, even with an imperfect seal, water would flow harmlessly off the outer edge rather than into the cabin. To eliminate another potential source of water intrusion, I considered mounting the plex to the frame using anodized angle aluminum. That way the mounting screws could be located on the sides and there would be no screw holes in the top surface. The angle aluminum would be on all four sides of the frame to secure the plex, but I would leave a couple of gaps on the lower edge (the hatches slope down toward the outside of the deck) to allow water to drain off the top easily and completely. The problem with this approach was that the mounting screws could not be used to hold the butyl in compression, which is critical to a good seal. In addition, the corners created by the aluminum would be sharp, not a good thing on a boat. So after a little vacillation, I abandoned the aluminum trim idea.
When I dismantled the hatches in the shop, it was obvious where the water had come in. Its path left dark stains in the wood and stained the pink sealant gray.
The rest of this post will be much briefer than usual. I spent several hours writing a longer one and lost a couple of hours work due to a disasterous accidental key stroke. Needless to say, I was very upset and frustrated, and just didn't have the heart to try to recreate it all. Besides, you might like the truncated style better. It's still got all the pictures and maybe they tell enough of the story. Let me know.Saturday I went to the boat and completed the glass work and weatherstripping for rectifying the leaks in the cockpit side lockers, installed new and more secure dorade cowl vents (the old ones could be knocked off), and off-loaded a bunch of gear that I will not use.
Sunday I went to a special tai chi seminar in the morning and spent the afternoon working on reinforcing and rebuilding the teak hatches per the plans previously outlined. Narrowly missed being hit by shrapnel while sawing through an old bronze screw.
I'm afraid that's it for this week.
Glassing in a fiberglass backing board to dam the flow and some weatherstripping around the perimenter should cure the leak. 
After the first post-repair rain or washdown, I’ll know for sure.
In the meantime, I marked and cut the fiberglass strips for fixing each of the four cockpit lockers and cleared out the aft head by loading all the left over paint, compounds and solvents into the truck. I would need more clamps to hold the fiberglass boards in place while the epoxy cured, and since it was still foggy, I decided I might as well go into town and buy them as well as pick up some lunch. 
I applied the sealant and smoothed the joint with my usual tools: an index finger and thumb covered with a tight latex glove. Makes for a smooth surface and forces the sealant into the joint. 
After letting the sealant partially cure, I removed the tape leaving a clean line. Since I had opened the tube of sealant, I decided to apply a redundant seal around the new ABI port I had intalled previously. It was kind of “quick and dirty” and not the best job I’ve done, but it will do until the time comes when I sand the cabin in preparation for painting. 
When I got there about 11 am, Rui Luis, the owner, and I looked over the sail in loft. The verdict: It was an old sail that had been repaired before, but with new webbing, re-stitching and few patches, it would get me down the coast. I would need a new sail, though, to go beyond that. For a couple of hundred bucks, it was definitely worth fixing so I can use it while I save and plan for a new sail. 
I also cleaned up an old Whale Gusher 8 bilge pump to get it ready for a rebuild and refurbished an old water filtration system from a previous boat. That project consisted mostly of cleaning up the filter housings and wire brushing, priming, and painting the rusty old mounting bracket.
Over the weekend I was able to get to the boat to glue them in place. I stuffed some scraps of soft paper into the bung holes first so that the bungs wouldn’t slip too far into the holes.
That proved unnecessary as the bungs were such a tight fit that I had to tap them into place (ever so gingerly) with a rawhide mallet. Two out of the ten were bad fits, so I just broke them out and redid them. (I had cut 15 bungs for the 10 holes knowing full well I’d likely drop and lose some and/or screw up the installation somehow.) Finishing off those little trim details really makes a big difference in how nice things look.
