Yesterday we spent a lot of the day working on Seacocks. The 50 year old
seacocks are frozen. They are beautiful bronze cone, barral type seacocks.
And this boat has a BUNCH of them. (14 I think) This particular one
supposedly was free in 2014 but of course there was no way to get a hammer
in there to pound on it and barely room for a wrench. Taking the jam nuts
off was turning 1 flat at a time. I had to dissemble the drawer system in
the forward head just to get an arm in behind the wall to do it. The entire
process took a couple hours but I did get it free! YEA! There was a second
one under the sink that is capped off and one under the v-berth that is for
the raw water pump. Equally difficult to get in to. For that one it was
two hands through a drawer sized hole about 1 foot wide. But both came
free. I used a pully puller to press out the cone and it works great but
boy when they release they are under a lot of pressure and they make a
satisfying and terrifying POP! when they come loose. Much better than
trying to use a hammer on bronze. I have a total of 4 loose and greased and
10 to go. The next two are under the storage locker behind the sink in the
galley. I'm not sure I can even get in there. Perhaps I will stand sam on
his head and stuff him into the locker to work on it...
Wait for it.... POP!
It's cooler today and yesterday, in the 50's, and windy. There is a gale
warning but I haven't seen winds over 20 knots yet. The water is up 2 feet
over yesterday and rain is coming at the end of this week.