This year I am replacing my garboard drain plug. Why? My own fault, and the story might help prevent someone else from doing it.

The plug is located between the engine and the batteries and with the engine hatch open, it looks easy to get at… but it’s not. One has to reach way down, with arm straight out and try to turn it. Not much leverage that way.

Now installing it isn’t too bad. It only needs to be firmly snugged down. A little grease on it helps keep it water-tight and prevents corrosion from jamming the two together.

Nonetheless, the plug seems to get firmly stuck over the season (maybe from vibration?) and is very difficult to remove by hand.

After going through this for many years (using various tools that kept slipping and falling into the bilge) I decided to make a tool. Being experimental, I didn’t get very fancy and used an old tent pole, some threaded rod, a bit of copper tubing and some nuts. It’s really just an extension made to fit the plug. And “Hey!”, it worked! It removed the plug easily.



The next Spring, I made an error. Due to the ease of use, I used the tool to tighten the plug. I thought I did it gently, but perhaps not as in the Fall, it was very difficult to get out. So difficult in fact, I could feel the plug starting to experience a torsional failure. So I stopped, and had to remove the batteries (a good idea anyway for winter storage) and use an open-ended wrench on the square part of the plug. A very awkward thing to do, but I got it out.

The lesson is if I want to use the tool to tighten the plug, use it very, very gently to try to obtain the same torque as if doing it without the tool.

In the picture below, the old plug is on the right with the new one on the left. Notice the longer, more spindly neck on the old one. The new one looks tougher so that ought to be a good thing.



The old one was bent slightly when I bought the boat, but never had the spiral twist to it (hard to see in the picture) that it does now.

So… a long winded and not very interesting story, but it might help someone… someday.