We have had a leaking dorado box in our double bunk forward of the salon for some time now.  The bunk is rarely used and if it rains, we just place something on the bunk to catch the drips.  We finally decided it was time to do something about the leak.  This started several months ago with removing the thin plywood decorative ceiling in that stateroom to gain exposure to the bottom side of the deck. There were a few reasons, I wanted to verify where the leak was coming from and also wanted to check a notorious place on these boats for potential rot behind the mast on the deck core.

This will likely be in more than 1 part since I am doing this work at a pretty leisurely pace.   I started the work by attempting to remove the screws that were holding the dorado box down to the frame mounted to the deck.  The screws have had so much varnish or epoxy placed over them over the years it was impossible to get a screwdriver into any of the slots.  I attempted a knife to cut the epoxy out and even tried to use an impact screwdriver in hopes to get things started.  None of these worked and I had to resort to prying the box off of the mounting slats.  In short, this split the mounting slats in half and that is fine as they are easy enough to replace and were the cheapest route to go down for this work.

Once pry-ed off, I scraped the deck and cleaned up all of the old sealant used.  It seemed to be epoxy in some places, wood glue in others, butyl tape or maybe home bathroom tub and tile caulk and also some of the black sealant that goes between the teak slats on the deck.  All in all it was a bit of a mess but after working at it for a few hours I was able to remove the cowl vent made of solid bronze, the dorado box as well as pounding the inner bronze piece down through the deck with a rubber mallet.

The next steps was to remove the spacer of wood you see in the photo able and either make a new one or ensure that all of the areas of water intrusion are checked to be sure there is no rot in the core.  So far so good for us, but I was nervous about that.  I will then be filling the screw holes with epoxy after wallering them out a bit and filling the oversized hole with epoxy.  

Once all of this was removed, I had a good clear view of what the actual deck, glass, core and bottom glass as well as the spacer looked like.  It also allowed me to look for any core rot around this opening and the great news is there was not any.

The next post will be on the refinishing of the box itself, the cleaning of the bronze and removing seized parts when stuck together and lastly re-assmbly of the final product.

Below is a video for Part 1 of the work effort and Part 2 will be put online the week after next given the holidays.

I would love to hear any comments on how you may have removed the Cowl Vent from the Ring that it screws onto.  They two metals seemed to have had a reaction to one another.  I am going to try soaking it in Diesel if a few shots of PB Blaster doesn’t work.  I would love your comments and suggestions below or over on the YouTube Channel