I've read quite a bit about thru hulls on earlier Catalina 22's. I have a 1973 that used to have the permanent head under the v-berth plumbed to two thru-hulls to let water in and (you know what) out. I tossed the old head and installed a porta pottie. The thru hulls are the garden gate variety and rather than take the chance of a future failure, I want to replace them Unfortunately, they are just adjacent to each other and when I tried to unscrew them from their extention pipes that are glassed into hull, the gate valves bump into each other making it impossible to unscrew either one fully. I assume that because they are so close to each other that when Catalina installed them, they must have assembled the valves to the pipes and then glassed them in without needing to screw the valves into the pipe. I think the only way to remove them (short of cutting them off with a blow torch) will be to cut off the "volcanos" holding them in a the compartment sole. Has anyone out there figured out a way to take off the old valves without cutting them off at the sole? I originally just wanted to install a couple of newer seacocks just in case I decided to plumb something up there in the future. Now I'm thinking that if I have to cut the old ones out to remove them, I might as well just glass over both holes and not worry about having thru hulls up there at all.