Time to think about our seacocks

[Jim Walsh]

Annual maintenance may be a little over zealous but whatever your interval now is the time to add this to your "to do" list. This tutorial makes it a snap for those who may lack experience.
http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/tape ... e_seacocks

[Megunticook]

Great link. I had to free up a pair of badly seized original Spartan seacocks when I bought my TyS, took some doing to free 'em up. Fortunately I Googled up that same link and it really helped. Plus I talked to one of the folks at Spartan on the phone, where I bought the compound and grease, which was also helpful. But the online tutorial is very thorough with great photos.

I'm new to sailboating but I gather keeping your seacocks in order is akin to having a working fire extinguisher aboard: you hope you'll never need it, but when you do it damn well better work right or you could be in for a bad day.

[David Morton]

I am also in the process of servicing my seacocks. The biggest problem is access. I'm left with just one last one and it's a killer. On my CD 25D trying to get to that port scupper drain seacock seems impossible, with little room to even get a wrench around the retaining nut, let alone swing a mallet to knock out a frozen tapered cone. Any one have any tricks up their sleeves, short of taking out the Yanmar?

[Doug Hill]

David,

I feel your pain. When I did mine last spring, I used a socket wrench to undo the retaining nut on that port side seacock. I don't remember off hand the size of the socket, but it wasn't one I had in my set. I recall taking one of the nuts from another seacock to Sears and matching it in the store. It is now on the boat waiting for the chore this year.

I also use a small ball peen hammer with the handle shortened a bit to provide enough "oomph" when tapping out the cone. I keep the nut on, screwed out to the end of the thread to provide a larger flat surface to strike and not damage the threads. Don't ask me how I learned that!

Fair winds,
Doug

[Steve Laume]

The starboard cockpit drain seacock on Raven was nearly impossible to get to. When I reconfigured the hot water heater and batteries, I cut off a good portion of the water heater shelf and that made a huge difference in getting to the seacock. The new water heater lives on a shelf, squeezed under the cockpit sole. The two house batteries are now forward and outboard on what is left of the original shelf. The seacock is a little easier to get to.

I also took a combination wrench and cut the closed end off of it. I then ground the cheeks down with a coarse belt on the sander. Once modified, I sprayed it with cold galvanize and it lives in my tool box for the check nut. I have one other seacock that is still hard to get at. For this one, I use a socket in a ratchet that I cut the handle down to a few inches.

Once you start to maintain your seacocks on a regular basis there should never be a need to bang on them to get them free. I only haul every two years and they hold up well for that period of time. I use red grease from NAPA so nothing fancy is needed. I have never lapped mine either and although there are some flaws in the barrels, they don't leak and turn well. I believe too much lapping will wear them down in time. The most important thing you can do to keep they free and working properly is to use them or at least exercise them often.

The Spartan seacocks are kind of a PIA to service but are extremely reliable and fool proof. Once you get them working properly all you need to do is turn then every so often and then brace up for servicing them again in a year or two, Steve.

[Steve Laume]

One more tip, I have posted before.

Get your hands on a set of metal stamps. I stamped abbreviations for all the seacock locations on each handle. This allows me to take them all out at once and bring them home to clean up on a bench. YOU DO NOT WANT TO MIX THEM UP. Sharpie marker will not hold up to cleaning so it needs to be stamped into the metal.

Also make sure to clean out the actual through hull when you are servicing the seacocks. This is especially important with the engine water intake.

A few stretches might help before tackling the task and some Advil might be helpful as well, Steve.

[M. R. Bober]

Excellent primer/reminder. I would add one final step: Take your Aleve. Maybe a suggestion about not swearing--too loudly--in the presence of children or the faint of heart. Some of these rascals are nearly impossible to reach.

Mitchell Bober
Sunny Lancaster, (Where I do most of my best maintenance and sailing.) VA

[Neil Gordon]

Servicing too often is way better than the alternative. I suspect I can service all of mine in the time it would take to free up one really stuck one.

[bottomscraper]

A few years ago i started doing mine in the fall, not having that task hanging over your head makes spring that much better.

[Neil Gordon]

A few years ago i started doing mine in the fall, not having that task hanging over your head makes spring that much better.

Overall it might be warmer then, too. I always seem to be doing them in the cold and damp, which just causes me to bleed more.

[JWSutcliffe]

I 2nd everything Steve said. I remove the barrels on mine once a year and grease them, have never had to lap them. The key to never having to hammer on them is to grease them yearly and use them. Mine are closed at the slip except for one cockpit scupper, and opened when i take the boat out.

[oldragbaggers]

My poor husband is in the throes of misery right now with trying to free up all six of our seacocks which are seized up solid as rocks. Our boat has been sitting on the hard, unattended, for six years now and they are just completely frozen, some open, some closed. He spent all day last Saturday and was not able to free any of them. Fortunately I was not present so any bad language was a private matter between him and his seacocks.

He does say, however, that considering all the love we are now giving this poor old girl he thought she would have been more grateful and cooperative. Tomorrow we go to try again. If anyone has any secrets for freeing the really hard stuck ones, (tapping has been tried, of course, we are taking a heat gun tomorrow) we would love to hear them.

[Sea Hunt Video]

Becky:

Thanks so much for revitalizing this thread. I am trying to get up the courage to service my seacocks on S/V Bali Ha'i in the heat and humidity of Miami. I had forgotten about this thread and the comments by CD 25D caretakers (especially Doug and David) concerning the lack of any access at all to at least one of the seacocks. As luck would have it the inaccessible seacock is also the one that is "frozen solid". I managed to unfreeze it about a year ago but because it is a cockpit scupper seacock I always leave it "open" and do not periodically operate it to keep it working.

Now, thanks to YOU Becky I will be unable to sleep tonight.

[oldragbaggers]

I'm so sorry Robert. Being a person who has trouble sleeping myself the last thing I would want to do is be responsible for someone losing ZZZzzzz's.

Our engine is out right now being worked on so Lance has good access to the engine and cockpit scupper seacocks. (As good as it can be I guess.) So if ever there was a good time to service them, this is it. And certainly he wants to get them done and operational before the engine is ready to go back in.

Good luck with Bali Ha'i. If you find the secret for getting your frozen one unstuck you HAVE to share it. It's the law.

[swhfire21]

I had one frozen seacock that would not budge. I applied Kroil twice to cylinder ends and through hull opening (boat on land). Two days and she came free with a little extra effort.

Kroil is similar to WD 40 ($35 per can) but works unbelievably. We use it at work all the time. I've not really found much that it won't work on.