O34 Transom Thruhulls back in

Today the Admiral and I got almost all of the transom SS parts back in. They had started out shiny years ago, and I was able to quickly buff them up again. Most of the thruhulls are stamped "316", which is a good thing.

The pair of molded-in recesses are for the cockpit drains and are kind of an Olson trademark feature. No particular functionality unless one wanted to put a "flap" back flow preventer across each one to try to keep a following sea from invading thru the drain, perhaps. Maybe. (?)

Like many others here I had previously replaced all of the OEM 1988 "plastic" thruhulls due to obvious UV degradation.
Thruhull census: two large cockpit drains, two 3/4" drains for the two electric bilge pumps, one larger thruhull for the manual cockpit bilge pump. The diesel SS exhaust fitting, and note the former former Universal diesel quarter inch syphon break outlet that used to be right above the exhaust is glassed over and gone -- the Betamarine does not require one.

What with the new hull finish being so shiny, I felt like I needed to totally buff out the backstay tang. I needed to check it carefully for cracking anyway. It passed with zero defects.

The inside photos sort of hint at the limited room for a 6'2" person to worm his way back there and wield a socket wrench. The designers of the cast nuts for each thruhull should have put in a bit more height for a slip-joint wrench to try to get a grip on the flats. (big sigh) Some slightly foul language was involved, altho most of the voices stayed inside my head. Of course the designers for these castings are frugal with the metal & figure that this sort of part only gets installed once.....

Note the slanted opening for the radar post, and the upright frp tube "socket" for the base, which was glassed to the bottom of the hull.

Better progress now, after losing a week to a snow/ice storm, and it's always kind of interesting/amazing just how many separate parts a boat of this size has bolted onto it!

March Update: New photo of the inside of the transom, with all those hoses back in place.

This added page brings together information about the replacement of the 1988 OEM thru hull fittings. There were two changes in this layout made when hauled for the repainting -- the old small exit for the syphon break was eliminated in 2018 when he new Betamarine25 was installed, and also due to the engine upgrade and the larger exhaust hose size, a new SS exhaust transom fitting was installed.

This older thread does show what went into the upgrade of all of the other transom thru hull fittings when they were converted to SS . The photos of the original fittings and of the replacements are interesting, and helpful. IMHO.