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West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
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> Eric,
> Saw your post about the P19 cockpit drain / Radiator hose and thought I
> would ask which one it is as I have been thinking of doing the same. Is
> it off of a 1968 Honda, a 84 Acura, 92 Chevy?
I really don't know. After i mounted the transom scupper and the drain, i
crawled into the quarterberths and sorta traced their arrangement onto some
paper, and then looked at all the 1.5" ID radiator hoses. I needed (and
found) one with a bend in it like a drain trap for a sink that was close
enough for my purposes. Your mileage may very - I don't think any two
potters were built alike, and this will depend largely on where your holes
are.
>Thought you might be able
> to save me some time searching with this specific info.
> How did you flush mount the scupper - there is not much backing down
> there.
Well, the scupper part isn't really flushmounted - its just a west marine
transom drain with integral scupper. I think it was $13ish. The cockpit
drain part itself was like $8 and looks a lot like a thru-hull but with a
very small flange designed for flush mounting.
Since the cockpit floor is cored, I first drilled a hole big enough for the
threaded part to go all the way through. I seem to recall it was 1 7/8.
Then, I used a larger hole saw (2"?) to drill through just the upper layer
of glass. I took a rotary tool to chew away an appropriate amount of the
balsa core between the layers, probably a little over 2" in diameter. Then I
mixed up a batch of epoxy (marine-tex) and sealed off the core. I'll attempt
some ascii art:
--top glass----- 2" -------
core+++++++++++@@ @@++++++
--bottom glass--- 1 7/8" ------
I'm not sure this diagram helps much, but think of it as a cross-sectional
view through the holes. The "@" is the putty, sealing off the core. I didn't
want any leaks to spread through the coring. The original factory drain
installation made no attempt to seal the core though and maybe my setup was
overkill.
Anyway, once the epoxy cured, i touched up the shaping with the rotary tool,
and shaped it until the drain would seat flush like I wanted. The epoxy
should keep the core from getting saturated from any leaks, but I installed
the drain with a little silicone to prevent leaking around the fitting into
the bilge. I also made a backing plate for both the transom scupper and the
drain with some scrap marine plywood with a half dozen or so coats of
oil-based polyurethane paint for protection.
On my 88 boat the insides of some storage compartments actually had bare
unfinished softwood in them and I've used this high-gloss white paint (I
think its Minwax brand) to seal off the wood and make it look much nicer. It
should work well - the original backing plates were unfinished plywood and
they lasted an awful long time.
I did a similar install on the scupper on the transom, but had no need to
flush-mount it, so it was a little simpler, like any thru-hull. Its much
more difficult to chew away the plywood core of the transom to make room for
epoxy than the balsa on the cockpit floor, and kinda pointless anyways since
on my boat the fiberglass is on only one side of the plywood (inside is
painted) so I just painted the insides of the mounting hole with many coats
of the oil-based paint. Not quite as slick a setup as I would have liked,
but still many steps above the factory arrangement, which made no attempt to
seal the exposed bare wood inside the holes.
I used the radiator hose to connect those fittings, and to add a yachty
touch, I did the ABYC-recommended procedure of using two hose clamps on each
end. Actually, the ABYC thing would have been to install a seacock first to
the scupper, but unless I added an access hatch to reach a seacock from the
cockpit, the last thing I would do if that hose were to break away on the
water would be to try to crawl down a quarterberth to turn the seacock! On
my boat the scupper is typically above the waterline when the boat is
unloaded, and slightly below when loaded, so I'm not too worried about it.
But if it were to give me problems, my next project is to finish my bilge
pump installation. I bought a pump and floatswitch that I can sqeeze in the
keel skeg, beneath my fancy radiator hose. Its a real tight fit, but doable.
I've already run the wiring underneath the quarterberths and installed a
three-way (on/off/auto) pump control panel, but have yet to physically mount
the pump. I had to cut away some of the fiberglass tray that sits beneath
the cockpit drain in order to access the skeg area.
I might someday add a manual diaphram-style bilge pump. I think I could
mount it to the inside of the transom, and use an access panel in the
cockpit to allow a removable handle to engage the pump with the access panel
removed, but I haven't worked out the details yet. if i do that the same
panel might allow access to a seacock, in which case I may add one.
Another project I already completed this winter was adding speakers to the
cockpit. Last season I installed a stereo and some speakers inside the
cabin, but you couldn't hear very well outside and they got in the way
inside, where I had them mounted on the compression post. Installing
speakers in the cockpit was easy once I got the nerve to cut the holes. I
must have measured and re-measured a dozen times. I found some new 'pyramid'
brand totally waterproof 5 1/4 speakers on sale cheap on ebay. I think they
were only some $20 for the pair, and they don't sound bad at all. I mounted
them at the rear of the cockpit facing forward, on either side above the
seats, and caulked them real good with silicone.
Another was I added a drain to the cockpit storage compartment beneath the
winch, and it drains into the cockpit itself (I didn't want to add another
external hole to the transom). I used a 3/4" sink drain from West Marine. I
didn't flush mount this one, mostly because there just wasnt enough material
to work with, but I might re-do it. I still get 1/8 inch of water collected
in the compartment. At least now its usable. Before having a drain, it used
to get 6" of water in it. I think it mostly leaks in through the winch
mounting bolts which I haven't yet attemped to seal.
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