Just when you think it's time for the boat to show some appreciation for all the big things we do for it, it comes up with a little thing to make you crazy.
Go to open the Water Fill deck plate and it comes apart in your hand.
I suppose I thought my fill caps were forged by titans in some grand furnace in the sky. Or milled from a solid block of Titanium down in Irvine, back when men were men and Ericsons were, well, so expensive they went out of business. But, as they used to say, noooo.
I can't even find evidence of a tack weld to hold that slotted plate on top of the thread body. Both pieces are stainless. How the devil were they attached?
Anyhow, they suddenly weren't attached anymore.
I went to West Marine and bought the standard replacement, which appeared to match exactly on the closest inspection possible, as the attentive salesman agreed.
Of course, it didn't. After screwing it in, you could pull it back out with two fingers.
Many of us have been through this before, I'm certain. It can be absurdly, ridiculously difficult to find the right fitting for these ancient, anonymous fixtures, and at least once in the past I had to replace the entire fitting just to get one with a cap that fit. And it was a massive irritating PITA, twenty years ago, with screws that broke and a hose that wouldn't pull up to receive a new hose clamp, and months before I finally got around to actually getting the duct tape off the water fill and a real screw-plate installed.
So this time I just drilled holes in the old plate and reattached it to the screw body with bolts.
I still don't know how the original was made, or how the slotted plate was made to stick to the body without any apparent mechanical connection at all.
Go to open the Water Fill deck plate and it comes apart in your hand.
I suppose I thought my fill caps were forged by titans in some grand furnace in the sky. Or milled from a solid block of Titanium down in Irvine, back when men were men and Ericsons were, well, so expensive they went out of business. But, as they used to say, noooo.
I can't even find evidence of a tack weld to hold that slotted plate on top of the thread body. Both pieces are stainless. How the devil were they attached?
Anyhow, they suddenly weren't attached anymore.
I went to West Marine and bought the standard replacement, which appeared to match exactly on the closest inspection possible, as the attentive salesman agreed.
Of course, it didn't. After screwing it in, you could pull it back out with two fingers.
Many of us have been through this before, I'm certain. It can be absurdly, ridiculously difficult to find the right fitting for these ancient, anonymous fixtures, and at least once in the past I had to replace the entire fitting just to get one with a cap that fit. And it was a massive irritating PITA, twenty years ago, with screws that broke and a hose that wouldn't pull up to receive a new hose clamp, and months before I finally got around to actually getting the duct tape off the water fill and a real screw-plate installed.
So this time I just drilled holes in the old plate and reattached it to the screw body with bolts.
I still don't know how the original was made, or how the slotted plate was made to stick to the body without any apparent mechanical connection at all.
Attachments
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deck water2.jpg -
deck water drilled.jpg -
deck water installed.jpg
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