Northern Phoenix hit the water and floated for the first time in 6 years. 
 August 29th, 4:00 pm.  at Port Kinsale Marina Virginia. 

 We had tried the day before, but we had 2 leaky Wilcox-Crittenden that need to be replaced.  They have been "over lapped" over the years, the cones would now go too far through and could not seal at the other end.  You could tap them through with a hammer and create a tight seal, but that really made for an impractical safety feature...needing to use a hammer.  So two new ball valves were used.  Which had all different holes etc... that need to be changed, old holes epoxied, new caulk, etc...  Of the 16 holes through the boat, none leaked, but 2 of the seacocks leaked.

  Here is a brief description of the problem I had with them, as sent by email to a few friends:


We tried to float the boat today, but I had a leaky cock.  It is really hard to go to sleep on a boat with a leaky cock, keeps you up all night thinking about how you will wake up with your feet wet.  It is harder to keep your boat in the water when you cock is leaking.  At first it was quite a dribble, but I was able to grab a hold of the nuts and tighten them so hard it hurt.  That really slows the dribble coming out of the cock quite a bit.  But one, was still dribbling.  It was in a hard to reach place, so I had to sit down with my legs wide apart, and grab one nut with each hand.  I torqued them as hard as I could, really twisted up the nuts, and my cock was still leaking.  The nuts were really hard to hold on to, as the grease was all over the place.  The cocks get greased up, but the grease had slid onto the nuts.  It is really hard to tighten up the greasy nuts.