Jeff,
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<br>What year is your Hobie 20?
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<br>Mine is a 1995, and this season I had quite a bit of trouble with it leaking. I say this season, because up here in Minnesota lakes do a cruel thing--they eventually freeze!
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<br>There's a couple of different ways you could use to determine if your mast is leaking or not. Usually you start to become suspicious when you have an unusual amount of difficulty righting your boat. I had an instance where I capsized my boat, and had to summon the help of some motor boaters. By the time I asked for help, we had been trying unsucessfully to right the boat for about half an hour. I told them to go pick up the mast, and they couldn't even lift it. A bad sign, indeed!
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<br>We drifted to a beach, and got the boat righted on land. I had a hole in the base of the mast where I had previously mounted a cleat, and the darn mast must have peed for about 20 minutes! Needless to say it was full of water. So...to make my point, if your mast pees, it probably leaks.
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<br>Another you might notice, is that when you disassemble the boat to trailer it, you hear water sloshing around. Keep in mind that at the end of a thirty foot pole, it doesn't take much water to make righting a real pain!
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<br>As for detecting WHERE the leak is, most people do it one of two ways. Either you have to submurge the mast, and look for bubbles, or you have to find a way to blow air in and look for bubbles.
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<br>My mast turned out to have one very major source of leakage in the comptip. The previous owner had mounted a spinnaker tang on the comptip in not one, but two places. The silicone on the rivets had worn off, and it leaked like a sieve. Rather than resealing the rivets, I decided to drill them out, and patch the holes with fiberglass and epoxy. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have just plugged the holes with 3M 5200 black sealent. Hobie Cat recommended a product to me called Sikaflex, but I was unable to locate it locally.
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<br>Many people expend a great deal of time looking for specific leaks in their masts. I took a slightly different theory, after deciding it was a pain to look for leaks. My theory is that anywhere there's rivets, it's either leaking now, or it's going to leak at some point. So once I was convinced that I had drained the water out of the mast, I armed myself with a good caulk gun, and the black 3M 5200 sealent. 3M 5200 is very permanent!! Be forewarned!!!
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<br>I talked to Tom Haberman, builder of the Supercat, and he says it's the only thing he uses to seal a mast, and is relatively permanent. It is removeable, he says, but will take a ton of elbow grease to remove.
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<br>Anyway, I sealed every rivet from top to bottom, and also did a bead around the comptip joint, and the mast head. In addition, I did a bead around the tang, and any other places where a plate is riveted on. I had one opportunity to capsize (and turtle--a long story) the boat after that, and it didn't leak a drop!
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<br>Sorry to have rambled on here, but it's 12:30am, and I really should be in bed! Let me know if you need clarifications.
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<br>Fair winds,
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<br>Tim Johnson<br><br>Hobie 20 #541
<br>Bald Eagle Yacht Club, Fleet 52
<br>White Bear Lake, MN