Couple Sails 5,000-Mile Atlantic Loop, Fixing Their Leaky Boat Along the Way

Water was pooling in the forepeak and the heads compartment bilge before Mike and Nicki Reynolds had even cleared Newfoundland. They had just arrived in the Azores from Newfoundland, a passage documented in Yachting Monthly's February 2025 issue, and en route they had discovered water leaking into the forepeak and the heads compartment bilge. Most sailors would have turned around. The Reynolds pressed on, and what followed was one of the more instructive extended DIY case studies an offshore cruising couple has published in recent years.

Over the next six months and 5,000 miles they identified and repaired three separate leaks while cruising the Azores, Canaries and eastern Caribbean. The boat was *Zen Again*, a Japanese-designed and built 1980s IOR three-quarter tonner, a well-equipped "pocket" blue-water cruiser. Mike is a consultant electronics engineer who lectures on yacht navigation and communications systems; he and Nicki have been cruising around the world aboard her since 2012.

The First Leak: Forepeak Surgery

The forepeak leak was the one that demanded the most brutal solution. Zen Again's interior has moulded fibreglass headliner panels in the forepeak, head and quarterberth, which meant the source of the ingress was completely hidden behind a solid structure. With the leak stubbornly invisible, the only path forward was to cut the headliner out entirely. The result was what Mike's own photo caption describes as "major internal boat surgery with a saw to cut it out" — and the payoff was immediate. "With the headliner gone the source of the leak was immediately obvious."

Behind the panel sat the culprit: a mooring cleat whose fasteners had quietly surrendered to age. Two of four 40-year-old bolts securing one of the mooring cleats were rusty and damp. The remedy was almost anticlimactic given what it had taken to find it. Removing the bolts, cleaning the holes, and fitting new ones was, in Mike's own words, "a very quick job compared to finding the source." The headliner-down photo, credited to Mike Reynolds, shows just how deep into the boat's structure the couple had to go to expose what amounted to a hardware failure any chandlery could fix in minutes.

Despite the boat maintenance in exotic locations, the Reynolds had a wonderful time with the group of OCC boats. They visited most islands in the Azores, then sailed to Madeira and onward to several of the Canary Islands. Those passages confirmed they had cured the forepeak leak — but there was still water appearing in the head bilge.

The Second Leak: A Skin Fitting That Had Been Replaced Too Many Times

The head bilge water led them to a more systemic problem discovered in Gran Canaria. They finally identified the source as a three-quarter-inch skin fitting that had been replaced, along with its sea cock and hose tail, only two years prior — the most recent of several replacements in the past 15 years.

The irony was that their own good seamanship habits had contributed to the failure. With a background in offshore racing, they had been cycling the head sea cocks at each use, leaving them normally closed — but they belatedly realised sea cocks aren't designed for thousands of cycles per year. Worse, each replacement had involved cleaning up the hole in the hull, gradually increasing its diameter and reducing the contact area of the skin fitting flange.

The solution was to replace the head inlet skin fitting and upsize it to one inch — they wanted to do so before their next passage across the Atlantic. But timing created a complication. Their Schengen time was expiring, and booking a haul-out and finding a mechanic in the run-up to the ARC fleet's departure proved too difficult. The water ingress was less than a litre a day, they had plenty of underwater sealant and epoxy putty aboard, and they could divert to Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands if necessary — so they purchased spare fittings and set sail.

The "calculated risk" wasn't a good idea. The lesson here is blunt: when a through-hull is the problem and the Atlantic crossing is the next item on the itinerary, "we can divert" is a plan B that should never have to be used.

Crossing the Atlantic, and Making It Right in St. Maarten

The crossing was more or less leak free. In the rare boisterous conditions and after rain they found a little water in the head bilge, which could be followed up to the headliner. They had a great crossing, keeping in touch with two OCC yachts via WhatsApp over Starlink and SSB.

After a week in English Harbour, Antigua, they sailed overnight to St. Maarten, a duty-free port and a great place for boat work. They had parts couriered from the US and UK, including a full set of Trudesign skin fittings, sea cocks and hose tails to replace all aboard. The too-frequently replaced three-quarter-inch fittings in the head were changed to one inch. While hauled out they also replaced their zincs, shaft seal, cutlass bearing and rekeyed their Coppercoat. Inspection of the external patch showed it had stayed well attached for more than 2,500 miles.

The OCC's 70th Anniversary: Maintenance in Good Company

The Reynolds weren't navigating this circuit alone in spirit. In the Azores and Canaries they joined an Ocean Cruising Club event celebrating the club's 70th anniversary. The OCC's 70th Anniversary Cruise in Company began in the Azores and finished in the Canary Islands, making it a natural companion event for any crew on the same arc. Having a fleet of like-minded offshore sailors within WhatsApp range is not a trivial thing when you're diagnosing leaks in unfamiliar anchorages.

What This Voyage Actually Teaches

The Reynolds' six months aboard a leaky boat compress into a handful of lessons that transfer directly to any offshore passage-maker:

• Finding a leak is almost always harder than fixing it. Once the forepeak headliner came out, the rusty bolts were obvious in seconds. Getting to that moment required a saw.
• "Tracking down leaks is difficult. It's often a saga of plot twists and flawed theories requiring dogged effort and occasionally power tool assisted violence."
• Repeated maintenance on the same fitting can create its own failure mode. Each skin fitting replacement enlarged the hull hole slightly, compounding the problem over 15 years.
• Cycling sea cocks aggressively, however seamanlike it feels, accelerates wear. A fitting designed for infrequent operation doesn't benefit from offshore-racing-style discipline applied thousands of times a year.
• Defer a haul-out for a through-hull issue at your own risk. The Atlantic crossing survived, but only with a contingency stop planned and underwater putty at the ready.

Arriving in Panama completed their 12,000-mile 2023-2025 North Atlantic circuit. And Zen Again was dry again. That single sentence is the best endorsement of the whole saga: a 1980s Japanese pocket cruiser, two sailors, three leaks, 5,000 miles, and one saw — and it ended with a dry bilge.