On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 18:24:26 -0800, engsol
wrote:

A couple of weeks ago I posted a plea for advice re removing
old thru-hulls. The boat, as you may recall, is a Yankee 30,
built in 1974.

As an update, and in hope it might help another new sailor, I'm posting
my experience with removing all 7 thru-hulls.

The difficulty seemed to fall into two catagories....one: the valve
could be removed from the thru-hull, and two: it couldn't


My boat is a 1979 Formosa 46. I discovered a retrofit to one
throughhull in the galley had been done with a piece of black iron
pipe. (Soft iron used for natural gas in houses on land!) This was not
original and the rest of the original seacocks and throughhulls are in
good condition.
This one had soft iron welded to the bronze seacock by corrosion. I
hauled the boat before even messing with it. The black iron broke away
with not much pressure from a pipe wrench. I decided to replace the
seacock.
In the end, I used a sawsall (reciprocating saw) to cut the
seacock's retaining bolts. Somehow I managed to get a wrench into the
cramped space to remove the seacock from the throughhull. Once the
seacock was removed, I used a throughhull wrench (Fits inside the
throughhull from the outside of the boat.) to back out the old
throughhull. For being over 20 years in salt water, both the
throughhull and the seacock were in very good condition. Only the
retrofit using the wrong material had caused the problem. When
cleaned, I could not tell them from the new replacements. I did not
need to replace the throughhull but I did.
The hull is not cored. It is solid glass. I bedded and installed a
new throughhull that fit the threads in the old hole. I bedded and
installed a new seacock.