Most boats are reinforced (thickened) in the hull areas where the
designer/builder expects through hulls to be placed. Be sure you don't
pick a particularly thin spot. You also might want to build it up some.

Joe Wood

Cindy Ballreich wrote:
Terry wrote:


I gather that valves that you screw down to shut off are normally
not as good as a stop cock/valve operated by a lever moving 90
degrees. But in the interest of not cutting another hole could this be a
situation where you could fit a screw type shut off valve with
its handle extended up to somewhere accessible. Then, by turning
the handle in a rotary manner from above it would be possible to
shut off the valve down below? Just an idea! Terry.


We actually thought about that, but those valves aren't as safe as the
regular thru-hull valves - especially for something as important as the
raw water intake. We played with the idea of attaching a gear to the
handle of the existing thru-hull and turning it with another gear at the
end of a long rod. I did some sketches and it probably would have
worked, but it would have been too fragile to withstand much abuse so we
abandoned the idea.

Anyway, we finally decided that the simplest and safest thing to do is
to go ahead and move the thru-hull the next time the boat is on the
hard. Somebody said that we could do this while the boat was still in
the water, but that seems crazy to me.

We want to remove the old thru-hull and fill the hole so we don't have
to worry about it any more. Should we be concerned about the strength of
the filled hole? (The hull is fairly thick and not cored.) Are there any
considerations we should be aware of? The whole concept of holes in the
hull is one that makes us uncomfortable.

Cindy