Ball Valves

Now here is a stroke of luck. While Conch Clipper was on the hard getting the bottom re-done I mentioned to the owner that I noticed some white crystals forming around one of my thru-hulls. Since the boat was on the hard anyway, I asked him to change the thru-hull but use the same ball valve because it was operating freely. Yesterday I came back to the boat and the owner of the yard told me the ball valve snapped off in their hands when they applied effort to unscrew the joints from the thru-hull. Lesson learnt; always inspect your seacocks, ball valves and thru-hull for seepage which will appear as a layer of white crystals formed from the seawater evaporating around the joints leaving behind the salt deposits. Refer to the pictures and you can see the white deposits around the base of the ball valve, what you can't see is the small portion of thru-hull thread that was keeping the two joints together. The yard owner also told me that you should not mix thru-hulls and ball valves together because of the difference in the threads. One has tapered pipe threads and the other has straight threads. The two do not fit well together and tend to seep regardless of how much paste you use. I will do more research on this issue and revise this post when I find out more info on the subject.