Seacocks

Adelaide said:

No, I have never heard of a cared for boat sinking due to open Seacocks...... and I am also a heavily insured individual. Helps me sleep better at night.

Click to expand...

Can't say that's 100 % correct ....but I agree...

Yesterday when working on my fuel system...I saw that the last time I cleaned my Air Conditioner strainer...I forgot to put the clamps back on the hose from the seacock to the strainer (up at the strainer bottom-forespar type strainer).

Feel like a fool ...but because the hose was only about 18 months old and still pliable...and not on a pressurized line...no leaks for over a week.

So you could look at this 2 ways...if you always close them..forgetting clamps or having them fail or the hose fail is no biggie...

or look at it the other way...if you don't close them the chances of your boat sinking from a failed hose or clamp is extraordinary small if your hoses aren't ancient.

Thanks for the input. I know the topic has been discussed before, but I like to get opinions of some new folks also.

The reason I inquired is that now that I live on the boat, I leave the seacocks open all the time. I’ve been making quite a few trips off the boat lasting a week or more and it just seems to be a pain in the butt to go around and close all the seacocks every time. I’ve got at least a dozen. It seems that every now and then I find one that I hadn’t seen before, even though I’ve crawled through every inch of the boat. I even found one for a water maker that was removed quite some time ago.
The surveyor gave me a schematic of the boat identifying the location of the seacocks. He sure missed quite a few.

I know I certainly have much more piece of mind when I’m away from the boat knowing that that at least the ones below the waterline are closed (which is what I do now), some of which are quite difficult to reach, which seems counter intuitive.

A PM post said that a couple of boats did sink in their marina due to hose or clamp failure.
I wonder if the folks whose boats sank where able to collect insurance if the sinking were due to a failure of a thruhull with an open below the waterline seacock and the owners were off the boat. I can’t find anything in my policy that addresses that scenario.

Which leads me to another inquiry (the OP said I can hijack the thread) about boats sinking in marinas.

If there was a fire in your marina and the staff were able to save your boat only by moving it but couldn’t get a boat over to it in time to tow it, could they gain access to your boats helm and start the engine/s to get it out of harm’s way? KJ

The first thing I did when I bought my boat was replace every hose that came from a seacock, and put new, high quality hose clamps on both ends, double clamped. I've lived aboard a long time, and never close them unless I'm doing some sort of service.

As to the marina moving my boat, they would never do that. They could, if they grabbed the key set they keep in the office, but the last fire we had, the USCG towed a boat or two out of the way to make a fire break.

FlyWright said:

No. I do exercise them periodically, but they remain open at all times unless I'm performing maintenance that requires them closed. When they're closed, I place a prominent flag on the keys alerting me that they are closed.

Click to expand...

Ditto

Gina

We've lived aboard for almost 4 years. There are boats in our marina with absentee owners (I.e.snowbirds) who leave their air conditioning on for 4-8 months while they are gone. A few have someone checking on them but most are unattended and I'm amazed that none have sunk so far .

We leave our thru hulls open with a wooden plug attached to each and we exercise them every couple of weeks.

Gina

No, for the port to figure out how to start and move each boat would take way to long.

Our docks are concrete, metal, with no covered slips. So the ignition points are limited to the boats themselves. Boat fires can spread so quickly from boat-to-boat that the fire dept would quickly cut the endangered boats loose and push them out of their slips. The port has a tow tug, open aluminum inboard skiff that is capable of handling all but the largest boats in the marina.

KJ said:

Which leads me to another inquiry (the OP said I can hijack the thread) about boats sinking in marinas.

If there was a fire in your marina and the staff were able to save your boat only by moving it but couldn’t get a boat over to it in time to tow it, could they gain access to your boats helm and start the engine/s to get it out of harm’s way? KJ

Click to expand...

I have perhaps a unique relationship with my harbor master. He has my permission to be aboard my boat and I routinely hire he or his staff to perform tasks I have not the time to do myself.

That said, if a fire broke out in my wooden boat house I would much rather deal with the insurance company after the fact than see anyone risk injury or worse making what I would consider a heroic effort to save my boat. As much as we adore our little boat it is ultimately only an item that can be replaced.

islandtimecruiser said:

We've lived aboard for almost 4 years. There are boats in our marina with absentee owners (I.e.snowbirds) who leave their air conditioning on for 4-8 months while they are gone. A few have someone checking on them but most are unattended and I'm amazed that none have sunk so far .

We leave our thru hulls open with a wooden plug attached to each and we exercise them every couple of weeks.

Gina

Click to expand...

Gina, can you explain this for me?

993guy said:

Gina, can you explain this for me?

Click to expand...

We bought packs of wooden pegs from West Marine (they come in packs of assorted sizes). We drilled a hole through each , put a piece of string thru it and tied it to the thru hull handle. The idea is that by tying it to the thru hull handle its ready to be placed in a hole to fill the breech if needed. We actually know someone who had a thru hull hose failure and the wooden peg saved his boat.

Gina

I have a sea chest w/ two valves on it; engine raw water and water to the head for flushing. Also have one seacock below waterline for blackwater tank outlet (where approved). When I leave the boat all are closed. When I was new at this I started the engine a couple times w/ raw water closed; $40 dollar replacement impellers forced me to make a laminated list for startup and shutdown, so that doesn't happen anymore. For me, closed seacocks are peace of mind.

My 2cents.......Unless a boat has original 30 year old hoses and clamps, I'd be just as concerned about the condition of the thruhull fittings as you crank on those 8" long handles on a large seacock... I've always done my own haulouts/bottom jobs, and marvel at how many folks never buff down their thruhull fittings to check for degredation before slapping on another coat of bottom paint...

Last haulout on my Beneteau 411 I replaced all 10 thruhulls and valves (didn't have flanged seacocks) on an 8 year old boat, due to poor metallurgy in the original fittings....had some wierd bronze/zinc alloy if I remember correctly. Others with like boats had failures when closing seacocks, and I didn't want to take the chance.. Good thing...I had one of the 1 1/2" fittings crack as soon as I put a wrench on it to loosen it in the boatyard! Other than that....best rag boat I ever owned!

Good point greysailor. Even the above water thruhull fittings can be critical.

I had all my below water fittings replaced when I first bought the boat. I didn't worry too much about the above water ones. I noticed one of the outer flanges was cracked after my boat was trucked to Adelaide, and added that to my work list, but other things were higher priority.

While I was away at work for a month the flange worked itself off, allowing the main billge pump hose outlet to drop back into the boat. The shaft packing had a high drip rate at the time as well, as I hadn't yet worked out how to contort my body to reach it.

Luckily my wife spotted the problem during one of her bilge checks, or it could have been a disaster.

AusCan said:

Good point greysailor. Even the above water thruhull fittings can be critical.

I had all my below water fittings replaced when I first bought the boat. I didn't worry too much about the above water ones. I noticed one of the outer flanges was cracked after my boat was trucked to Adelaide, and added that to my work list, but other things were higher priority.

While I was away at work for a month the flange worked itself off, allowing the main billge pump hose outlet to drop back into the boat. The shaft packing had a high drip rate at the time as well, as I hadn't yet worked out how to contort my body to reach it.

Luckily my wife spotted the problem during one of her bilge checks, or it could have been a disaster.

Click to expand...

Pics of the wife will be appreciated.

beachbum29 said:

Pics of the wife will be appreciated.

Click to expand...

That might have to be a separate thread.

AusCan said:

That might have to be a separate thread.

Click to expand...

Continue on...

beachbum29 said:

Pics of the wife will be appreciated.

Click to expand...

ok - New thread in the off-topic forum

greysailor said:

My 2cents.......Unless a boat has original 30 year old hoses and clamps, I'd be just as concerned about the condition of the thruhull fittings as you crank on those 8" long handles on a large seacock... I've always done my own haulouts/bottom jobs, and marvel at how many folks never buff down their thruhull fittings to check for degredation before slapping on another coat of bottom paint...

Last haulout on my Beneteau 411 I replaced all 10 thruhulls and valves (didn't have flanged seacocks) on an 8 year old boat, due to poor metallurgy in the original fittings....had some wierd bronze/zinc alloy if I remember correctly. Others with like boats had failures when closing seacocks, and I didn't want to take the chance.. Good thing...I had one of the 1 1/2" fittings crack as soon as I put a wrench on it to loosen it in the boatyard! Other than that....best rag boat I ever owned!

Click to expand...

The whole reasoning behind closing seacocks is to make sure that they will work when and if you need them. If you believe they are the weak link in the system, why do you replace them? Your reasoning would indicatedoing away with them. Just have a pipe nipple that the hose attaches to.

Sailor of Fortune said:

The whole reasoning behind closing seacocks is to make sure that they will work when and if you need them. If you believe they are the weak link in the system, why do you replace them? Your reasoning would indicatedoing away with them. Just have a pipe nipple that the hose attaches to.

Click to expand...

Nope...you missed the point. Just pointing out that degraded thruhull fittings are the weakest link due to the threaded portion is so thin when new...just adding a little food for thought for someone's next haulout inspection. Seacocks do need to be cycled regularly.