Say Yes to Seacock Labels

With Spring just weeks away and daylight savings time in effect I'm starting to think about intelligent upgrades for my boat, or anyone else's boat for that matter. Sometimes I come up with ideas by poring over the hundreds of photos I take when I serve as a Boat Of The Year Judge for Cruising World magazine. I use these photos to help find things I like or don't like about the boats we inspect.

One of the things that I'm seeing more and more on the new boats is really good and proper labeling of the various seacocks and through-hull fittings such as you see in the photo below:

The labeling can go a long way toward helping people who are a bit less than mechanically inclined to understand why for example, the sink in the head isn't draining, or why smoke is billowing out of the water pump on your engine and the overheat alarm is screaming at you.

This is an easy Saturday morning upgrade that won't cost a fortune either and may even save you a bundle over the cost of a new engine or water pump. I did a little checking online and one site, www.nametag.com offers up some plastic nametags at around $5.50 each with a minimum order of 5 that could easily be super-glued to the inside of a fiberglass hull near each seacock. (Clean and degrease the area first with a acetone moist rag.)

So, the average boat would cost less than $50 for a full set of very professional looking labels for all the through hulls. Sounds like a good plan to me.