A friend of ours has an H25.5. It nearly filled the cockpit with rainwater because both drains were plugged. Is there a kit or a personal mod that H25.5 owners have made to prevent this? The original design is meant for failure in my opinion.
H25.5 scupper mods?
- Thread starter Justin_NSA
- Start date
Because the drain on the starboard side transom on my H25.5 is larger than the drain on the port side of the transom I assume a PO had replaced (or repaired) the starboard side with a larger diameter drain. Why were the drains plugged, because of debris?
Unfortunately there are no clog proof scuppers. There is no substitute for checking and cleaning them frequently. I learned the hard way in an old boat by getting overflow water into the cabin. Had to open up the scuppers and pump out about 4" of water inside the cabin. Had to dry it out but it took forever to get rid of the smell.
That just happened to another friend of mine. Still drying out cushions. We've a had a very wet spring.
I would have expected to read that someone hole-sawed some 2" holes and added thru-hulls to increase flow and prevent clogs.
I would have expected to read that someone hole-sawed some 2" holes and added thru-hulls to increase flow and prevent clogs.
On my prior boat (which was not a Hunter, though this solution may work on a Hunter), I used a 2" forstner bit to drill one hole each in the port and starboard aft corners of the cockpit, through the back wall of the cockpit and out through the stern. I glassed short lengths of 2" internal diameter PVC pipe into the holes this created and then used a dremel to slightly contour the the interior of the glassed-in pipes where they met the cockpit sole so the surfaces were flush. This was done as part of a project to re-core the cockpit floor where the coring had become saturated from hairline cracks in the gelcoat and sitting water that could not drain through the 0.5" drain tubes the builder put in the cockpit.
After expanding the drain size, any water entering the cockpit flushed right out. I eventually added flappers over the holes at the stern because I was concerned about a stern wave pushing water into the cockpit through the drain holes, but I don't know that the flappers were necessary.
After expanding the drain size, any water entering the cockpit flushed right out. I eventually added flappers over the holes at the stern because I was concerned about a stern wave pushing water into the cockpit through the drain holes, but I don't know that the flappers were necessary.
I hit the interior and exterior of the PVC tubes with PVC primer (available at Lowes or Home Depot), which is designed to micro-etch the plastic before using cement on it. Not sure if that helped or was a useless step but I had no problem with epoxy adhering to the PVC I treated that way. I heavily glassed the entire exterior of the tubes to the inside of the hull and the outside of the back of the cockpit. I did not glass the interior of the tubes aside from a small piece of lightweight fiberglass cloth placed where cockpit sole met the bottom of each tube and then extended about 1.5" into each tube, just to prevent a crack from forming along that edge due to flexing of the cockpit sole.
So I had no issues with epoxy adhering to the PVC, but did notice about halfway through my first season after this repair that dirt seemed to adhere to the inside of the PVC tubes (possibly from the etching from the PVC primer I used), which caused slight discoloration that was probably only noticeable because the tubes were right next to my bright white freshly painted cockpit. The following winter I painted the inside of the tubes with the same paint I'd used in the cockpit (Interlux Perfection) and never had dirty-looking scupper tubes again. The paint adhered just as well as the epoxy.