Strut Attachement Point Leak?

[jbbmillar]

Our 390 has a leak. The water's flowing from the space below the generator shelf, down over where the shaft seal bellow clamps on the stern tube. It's hard to see. There's only about 3" of space below the genny shelf and what looks to be a raised area of the hull with four bolts which I assume are for the shaft strut.

Recently a line attached to a stern cleat wrapped -- it pulled like guitar string tight. It was bad enough that the diver took an hour to clear the wrap, but said the cutlass bearing was clean and didn't see any other problem. However, after a little use we noticed the bilge pump cycling about every 6 minutes. Not pumping a lot of water, and fortunately it hasn't gotten worse - yet.

My supposition/fear is that the wrap torqued the strut in some manner and opened the leak path, but I don't know that.

There appears to be a cut out in the genny shelf above the strut attachment. Any real top-down access will require moving or possibly removing the generator. If we need to get to the top of the strut we hopefully can just move it forward and get enough access.

We haul out in a couple of days to closely inspect the strut attachment area and figure this out. I'm sure I will be reminded what B.O.A.T. stands for.

I'm wondering if anyone else has seen a leak like this, has had to get access to the strut bolts, how they gained access, etc.