Seacocks ?? Open or Closed ??

Skip Boyer

Skip Boyer

Active Member
Sep 24, 2015
193
Lake Guntersville Al,
Boat Info
1998 500DA Sundancer, 1999 Maxum 2800, 1998 270 Sundancer, Oliver Hazard Perry FFG-7
Engines
Twin Detroit 6V92TA
Good morning all. I woke up on the boat Monday morning, (7am) grabbed a cup of coffee and went up on deck to enjoy the morning......to my surprise there was such a chatter of noise on the docks........what could this be i wondered ??.......well my neighbors sport fisher ( i think she's a 55 footer ) was sitting on the bottom !!! Not a good day ! When i went to bed after Sunday night football game she was still up. Not that i went out to look but at least enough that i didn't take notice of anything going amiss. After she was floated one of the divers said that a sea cock hose had broken off......of coarse the valves had been left open. My guestimation....4" or 6" seacock would probably allow at least in the neighborhood of 5 thousand gph of sea water to enter the bilge. Now the owners had been on the vessel and had taken her out the previous week. So my question is.....How often do any of you close your sea cocks ? After ever trip ? Never ? ????? Just as a side note (confession) I rarely ever closed mine (unless it was for maintenance reasons) until now. Now the are closed and will only be opened when the engines are running.
 
Mine are super easy to get to. So I pop the hatch and go below to check for any unusual smells. Switch on the fuel tanks and open the seacocks for the generator, and both engines. Reverse when I come back to the slip.

The only one that stays open all season is the HVAC. Maybe it is just me but I think cycling the seacocks on a regular basis is a good idea.
 
Boat is probably no more than 5 or 6 years old, my guess. Appears to be well cared for. Owner had just recently made the trip down from NJ to winter the boat here. I can not attest to anything as far as maintenance schedule or what actually caused her to go down so quickly. I do find it amazing that she went down so quickly. Less than 8 hours. May have happened even more quickly. I was told that somebody was out on the dock about 5 am and she was still up. That would make it less than 2 hours. When i came out at around 7-7:15, the dock master already had Sea Tow on site.
 
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We never closed ours but did excercise them and inspect on a regular schedule. On a 32 Open they are not easy to reach. Poor design in my opinion.
 
Never close them. But this scares me. I leave the A/C's on all season (dehumidify unless it's really hot...which is about a week up here :)) so no reason to close the engines and genny. I guess this is what insurance is for!!
 
spikedaddy99 said:
Never close them. But this scares me. I leave the A/C's on all season (dehumidify unless it's really hot...which is about a week up here :)) so no reason to close the engines and genny. I guess this is what insurance is for!!
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Don't "assume" insurance will pay if your boat sinks due to a failed hose. If the adjuster determines that the hose failed due to poor maintenance the insurance may decide to deny the claim. Just happened to a friend of mine this summer. Check your policy to read the exclusions. I also never close my seacocks but my hose are replaced every 5-6 years and double clamped.
 
hottoddie said:
Don't "assume" insurance will pay if your boat sinks due to a failed hose. If the adjuster determines that the hose failed due to poor maintenance the insurance may decide to deny the claim. Just happened to a friend of mine this summer. Check your policy to read the exclusions. I also never close my seacocks but my hose are replaced every 5-6 years and double clamped.
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Wow, really? However, it will never be for poor maintenance for me. I stay on top of that.
 
Boat is normally stored on lift, so usually left open. If we take her somewhere and are going to be moored for a while, I close them and put one or the other ignition keys on one of the handles. Neighbor closed his once and forgot to open it before starting up and fried 2 impellers. Was too late after his alarms started going off. The key thing is to prevent this from happening. PM is definitely the ticket though.
 
Korkie said:
Boat is normally stored on lift, so usually left open. If we take her somewhere and are going to be moored for a while, I close them and put one or the other ignition keys on one of the handles. Neighbor closed his once and forgot to open it before starting up and fried 2 impellers. Was too late after his alarms started going off. The key thing is to prevent this from happening. PM is definitely the ticket though.
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I did the same as your neighbor. Cleaned out the AC strainer because it was cruddy and checked the main strainer while I was at it. But forgot to reopen the main sea cock. Ran the engine at idle for 10-15 minuted before I got an alarm - which was way too late to save the impeller. Not fun waiting for Sea Tow with 20 people on board.

I usually leave the sea cocks open because I'm petrified I'll forget to open them. My electric hatch takes a long time to open, too.
 
Ill be keeping mine closed when not in use. And doing like Korkie noted, leave the keys at the valves. Makes sense to me. Not willing to take a chance on an incident or an insurance adjusters judgment.
 
Those hoses are pretty sturdy. Hard to imagine one would split after just 5 or 6 years.
 
JVM225 said:
Those hoses are pretty sturdy. Hard to imagine one would split after just 5 or 6 years.
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Right. They are wire reinforced. Thick. Hard to cut. Hard to wrestle into position. Very sturdy.
 
JVM225 said:
Those hoses are pretty sturdy. Hard to imagine one would split after just 5 or 6 years.
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I second that. I can't imagine the reinforced rubber hose breaking off. Perhaps the barbed nipple corroded and broke off in five or six years if it had a bad bonding wire perhaps. I just changed my 2.5 inch intake hoses that were original 13 years old. It was time but they were not in any danger of breaking off with out some considerable help. I learned to exercise my valves regularly as they were stuck open when I bought the boat. Neither of my surveyors checked their operation. They each said it was the others job! Took considerable effort to get them opened which ended up with my needing to replace the handles. I only close them for MX as they are quite a crawl to get to on the 44 DB. My hoses though are double clamped and will be replaced every five years.
CD
 
I changed mine last Spring just to be safe. At 17 years old the old ones didn’t look like they were in any danger of rupturing.
 
b_arrington said:
Right. They are wire reinforced. Thick. Hard to cut. Hard to wrestle into position. Very sturdy.
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I use a heat gun on mine to get them off so I can winterize the motors, then to get them back on again and it’s still a wrestling match.
 
Think about this post as a reminder wake up call. Talked to the guy that takes care of our boat today - asked how often is he looking at the hoses off the through hulls.

Every year when the oil change occurs, I have our mechanic do an overall check of hoses. Nothing wrong with monthly inspection.
 
UPDATE; So i just spoke with the owner as to what happened to bring the boat down so fast........it seems that this vessel uses some sort of flange to flange set up that uses a "V" or pinch clamp to hold them together. Looks like the bolt broken and allowed the two flanges to simply fall apart thus leaving a 4 in hole in the bottom. From his explanation im thinking this set up is similar to what heavy equipment uses on turbo/tube connections. Makes more sense how she would suffer such a mishap. These style clamps can be over torqued and over time vibration could weaken the bolt to a breaking point.
 
When we purchased our boat the surveyer recommended changing out raw water pickup hoses. They were in less than good shape. I went through and checked all of the hoses. This was the bottom side of our starboard exhaust bypass hose. It came apart while I was trying to remove it. Don’t think I would have seen it if I couldn’t fit behind the generator. Doubt any paid maintenance personal would either.
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The boat insurer for my place of employment, the insurance company made me sign a document certifying we would close all six sea cocks when the boat is left unattended in the water.

For my personal boat, there was no mention, although I did list in the application it would be on a trailer.
 
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