Saturn Leaking Water When on Plane

[ibanezfan]

Hello everyone, this is my first post so please forgive any breaches of etiquette of if this topic has been covered. Anyway, I have a Saturn FB 385. I've had it a couple of years and have used it VERY sparingly in that time. I've always had a trolling motor that allowed me to take the boat on small lakes and that's about it. This got boring sooooooooo

I recently bought a Tohatsu 15 HP engine to I can start taking the boat out to bigger bodies of water. Two days ago I took my kids out on the boat for the first two hour break in period. Today, I took the boat out alone and brought the throttle a little over half way, the boat got to plane no problem. However, I noticed a small amount of water coming in accumulating in the aft, port side of the boat, roughly where the transom meets the tube (and the floor for that matter). When I slowed down the problem seemed to go away but whenever I brought the boat back up to any appreciable amount of speed, especially at plane, the water started to come back in. Again this is all the way back after on the port side (where I was sitting and all the weight on the boat was).

I looked at the boat and didn't see any issues, no tears or anything and the drain plug was installed so I'm at a loss. Any help getting this figured out would be very much appreciated.
Thank you

 

[redneck joe]

Put the boat in the water without anyone in and see what water is in there after a few hours and you pull it out. Bring a pole and do some bank fishing.

 

[brodmann]

Fill the boat partially with water and just jacking up the tongue of the trailer and look for water running out. You'll want to try bow up and bow down if you have trouble looking for the leak. Much easier to locate water coming out than water getting in.

 

[ibanezfan]

Thanks so much, that's what I did. I found a very tiny leak where the patch that connects the hull to the tube meets the hull. I found a threat on a rib forum where the guy described the exact same problem that I have, mainly it only happens at speed and when up on plane. He said that the thin patch is under a lot of pressure the faster you go and its just not enough to keep the water out (essentially, I'm paraphrasing). According to this person the boat needs new patches because the adhesive that connects the patch to the hull is starting to fail.

I contacted Saturn because the boat is still under warranty, hopefully they'll help me out. The boat is under two years old and has been used really sparingly. I'd hate to give it up just as I'm starting to use it.

 

[909]

Imagine a brand new 2 year old boat failing . No one listens.

 

[ibanezfan]

Saturn reached back out but said, essentially they don't believe me. They said to take some pvc glue and put it where the patch that holds the tubes to the hull in the rear are connect, that should fix the leak. They said they've never seen anything like that before and were fairly dismissive. I'll try it though maybe that's all it needs. No effort toward honoring the warranty though, that was a little disappointing.