Going For A Dive

[Vitaliy]

So my Ac started acting up so I decided to do a bit of maintenance on it... long story short my F36 almost ended up sinking due to PO negligence.

heres the midway point if anyone is interasted in Reading

The waterflow was a good bit weak one day when I noticed it so I decided to investigate nd fix the problem.

so I poped the hatches open and first thing I did wa go for the water filter, neadless to say that thing had seen better days. as soon as I took it off one of two vey bad things happened, the retaining nut for the filter snaped...yay... and whats worse I noticed that the seacock wasn't all the way closing which means theres water leaking into the boat.

I started messing with the seacock, the handle snapped leaving the thing wide open and taking on water with no way of stopping it (mind you the boat is still in the water and that thrugh hull is 3 feet under the ater line right next to the keel. My bilge pumps were holding up however there was no way in hell I was going to leave that be overnight. I took a risk along with my neighbor and decided to just say screw it and unthread the seacock and install a new one right on there since I was already taking on water, as soon as we started to twist the old one off something felt wrong at which time we noticed that the leak wasn't just coming from the seacock, it was coming in fromt the throu hull fitting, the whole thing was spinning through.

I bit the bullet and got an emergency haul out at the lift that's thankfully 100 feet away from the boat, with the help of a few friends a towboat we got it on the lift.

After investigating the problem we discovered a uge problem with the thrughhull and the seacock, while installing the AC unit the PO never bothered to do three things, put a retaining nut between the trhough hull and the back wood plate to hold it all togather, seal the fitting NOR add the 3 screws required to hold it inplace from the underside, also a huge other flaw was that the filter was mounted directly ontop of the fitting instead of on the side and with a hose....

long story short, 2 days, new fittings and filter and about $1000 bux ater.... shes back in the water without any issues be
I hope no one has had to deal with n issue like this before

[prowlersfish]

Glad you got her fixed without more damage

[yorklyn]

WOW!

Glad everything ended on a good note!

[captainmaniac]

Glad everything ended up okay as well, but there are a few good lessons here.

Before pulling filters, strainers, or messing with anything else that is tied to something below the water line, make sure the related seacock can be shut off !!! If it can't, don't mess with anything else. If you have any issues with a thru-hull, pull the boat to deal with it. You never know what a PO might have done, or what environmental conditions may have done (including sea life or corrosion obstructing a seacock from closing), so make sure you can shut off the water before you find you need to!

[Vitaliy]

Well thats the problem, the seacock WAS closed and i have closed it off before to perform service on the AC unit, so the problem was in the internal failure of the components, it was one of those loose loose situations where water would have been coming in no mater what i did since the seacock wouldnt close in the first place, the leak was majorly coming from below it at the through hull, i just noticed it above the valve. it had to be pulled out of the water regardless.

[gettaway]

Just curious if the thru-hull that you removed and replaced was/ is connected to the boats bonding system?

[aaronbocknek]

HOLY CRAP!!! TALK ABOUT 'PUCKER FACTOR' VITALIY. glad you made it work. yipes!!

i'm curious. did the vessel have a prepurchase survey? if so, would this kind of snafu be discovered by the person performing said survey?

[P-Dogg]

Those mini Nerf footballs are good for times like that.

I replaced my AC hoses after I bought my boat because, well, just because. While I had them out, I tried running the AC pump and dumping the outflow into the bilge. I discovered like you that, as long as there is good voltage getting to them, the bilge pumps can more than keep up. Something that I found reassuring. I presume that you checked all of the other thru-hulls????