Mehmet,
You asked at the start of this thread: “Also the handles of the head and engine water intake are not working properly. Should I replace them? Any suggestions?”
I think you can conclude that they haven’t been recently taken apart, cleaned, inspected for corrosion, and regreased. When you say that the handles are not working, lets focus on the WC tapered bronze plug ones on the head and the engine intakes. The handles on our WC seacocks usually turn a bit hard, even when they have just been greased. I made several wooden handles that I bolted on to those stubby handles on the head and engine intakes that give a lot better leverage. Have you used a cresent wrench on the handles to gently test just how frozen they are?
From the photo, your head intake seacock looks to me like you have leaking through the bolts. This means that during your haulout, you should remove the through-hull (unscrew it from the outside), then the bolts and the seacock, and maybe replace the backing wood if it looks like it’s become soft. I suspect that you will find that the bolts are partly corroded away. I think that a 3/4" ball valve is the best choice here–it has a great handle and it’s easy to use.
Whether you need to replace other WC seacocks will depend on what they look like when you get them apart. Assumming that they are as old as the boat (30 yrs?), I bet they have some corrosion on the bronze tapered plugs. This is common–Nigel Calder calls it ‘hour-glassing’, where bronze is lost around the plug’s through-hole to a degree that allows water past the plug even when closed. You can get grinding compound and ‘lap’ it by coating the plug and moving the plug back and forth in the body, many times, until the hour-glass is gone. Or, you can replace the seacock. I tried lapping, and decided to replace it (with another WC for the engine intake and ball valves for the head intake and galley sink).
Do you have Calder’s “Boatowner’s Mech. & Elec. Manual”? The 3rd edition is much expanded. He has good drawings of the 3 types of seacocks. Although he recommends taking ball valves apart annually, I don’t know anyone that does it, and that includes professionals that I’ve asked about it.
I would like to suggest you get directly involved with your seacock replacement. I’ve found that the reluctance to take on a major maintenance job is overcome by learning about how it all works, talking it over with others, and planning the work ahead of time. Sure, boat work seems to always take more time than we expect, but when it’s done, you have the satisfaction of knowing how it works, and that the work was well done. Larry Pardey, when asked the most important attribute for successful cruising, said “excellent fix-it skills” (cruising tips on their website). Cruisers develope fix-it skills by being willing to dive in and take things apart, convinced that a lot of our gear is understandable and fixable. You might want to hire a professional (or get the help of an experienced friend) when you work on your first seacock, but then go ahead and do the rest of them yourself.
Dan BCC 59 (1981)
