This was one of the first wake-up calls we had soon after purchasing Seahorse. Her static engine room vent is on the starboard side about 4 feet off the deck. It is a vertical duct which terminates on the side of the pilothouse in two horizontal stainless louvers, one above the other. Each of these had a fiberglass cover, open on the bottom, but the cover extended only just below the bottom of the louvers. A baffle on the inside was supposed to drain any air-entrained water outside, and under normal conditions it did just that. However this proved inadequate when we encountered 50-60 knots in the Chesapeake. The wind was on the beam and lasted about 20 minutes or so. The spindrift and rain was pretty much horizontal, and on our next ER check we noticed it was wet beneath the duct. Also, the partial vacuum created in the pilothouse caused the sliding window drains on the windward side to bubble water and air up through them. Other than stuffing the window channel with paper towels, we can't think of a cure for that, but we did have the fiberglass louver covers extended downward about 18 inches. Better now, we think, but we'll have to wait until it's well-tested again to be sure. It was cool that day, and we had the ER door open to supply a little heat as the heating plant was secured It never occurred to us then, that had we kept the ER door shut, the vent's twin on the port side (a battery locker vent) would have not have contributed to the vacuum in the boat and worsened the water ingress. We also think that operating the ER blower might have reduced the vacuum a bit, too. Regards, John "Seahorse" > Aboard Bluewater we took a little water through our big portside vent, with the water finding its way into the master stateroom overhead--first time ever! In spite of securely taping our lazarette, we discovered a small nuisance leak through the tape into the lazarette and cannot figure out how the water's getting in. Chris reports lazarette leaks over her inverter control panel; she was investigating that late last night when Moana Kuewa took a gusher-about five gallons came cascading down the engine room air intake. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.