There are two important classes of chemicals. Goos and Lubes. Goo to make things stop. Lubes to make them go.

They each have specialized purposes. It helps if you know what you're doing. And in some cases, you learn as you go. This is one of those lessons learned.

The chainplates — slabs of steel that anchor the wire rope holding the rigging upright — pass through the deck. When we replaced the chain plates, we had to fill the openings in the deck. With a goo.

But which goo?

Originally, the boat was assembled with a fiber pounded into the slots and a gooey sealant over the top. What was the fiber? Wool? Oakum? The glass fibers used for insulation? The glass fibers for fiberglass? No clue. I only know there was a puff of stuff that came out with each chain plate.

I tried to use goo-in-a-tube to reseal the opening around the new plates. The gaps were too huge. They all leaked like crazy.

Someone told me Butyl Tape is the preferred goo for this job. Stretchy. Tenacious. Essentially indestructible except by UV exposure.

Closely related is "putty tape". It's not as stretchy.

It appears, I bought the cheaper "putty tape."

CA ordered proper butyl tape. It's super-stretchy. Super-flexible.

Since the weather's warm, and winter's coming on, she's redoing all the feet of all the chainplates with the new, fancy butyl tape. This will, we hope, reduce water intrusion. We'd love to be sailing today. But the warm weather is perfect for these kinds of jobs that involve goos that need to set correctly.

We're also paying Zimmerman Marine to properly rebed our hatches.

Here's view of the deck after the decorative wood-work was removed.

Top-left of the image is a hex-nut on the latch.

The corner has a bit of a gap.

There's an aluminum rod from about top-center to top-right. That's what holds the hatch open to let in air when it's warm and sunny and you're bobbing at anchor.

The gap is where our skills and abilities end. We're hoping the boatyard folks can find any other voids in there and make sure they're properly sealed up to eliminate water intrusion. I'm sure they have the experience to use the right goo.

It turns out that we have other leaks. We're not sure, because it's so hard to observe, but the hawsepipe behind the windlass may be leaking. We think it's not bedded properly. We think we can do this ourselves.