The Unified Corribee Website

The standard 0.75 inch cockpit drains on Corribees have been seen plumbed to seacocks directly below each drain and also to drains on opposite sides to prevent fountaining. The latter is generally recommended. A few boats have drains that exit via the transom although it is thought that the extra length of hose in this configuration is a disadvantage with more chance of getting blocked and more resistance to flow.

Hoses should be marine grade and rated for below the waterline use. They should be secured with two Jubilee clips at each end of the hose (i.e. four per hose in total). The clips should be made of 316 stainless steel. It is surprising how many chandlers stock 304 stainless steel or mild steel clips which are not suitable for marine applications.

The picture below shows the cockpit drains and seacocks of a bilge keel Corribee installation.

Jonny Moore has kindly allowed us to reproduce this article:

Just as with all the other modifications we have made to Casulen IIthe main objective has been to make her more seaworthy. The cockpit on Corribee’s is self draining, yes, but have you ever filled it to the brim and timed how long it takes to empty? Probably not, but you would certainly have time to take a quick bath before you ran out of water. We found out when we got knocked flat by a big gust of wind towards the end of our summer trip of 2006. Admittedly it was nobody’s fault but our own, we were carrying far to much sail for the conditions. By the time we had got sorted out the wind was reading a steady 34 knots and we were travelling at 7.5 knots with just a jib off a GP14 up which was our storm jib at the time. We learnt a lot that day.

The picture below shows the positioning of the drains and seacocks on a fin keel Corribee.

Anyway back to cockpit drains. Having looked at what was under our cockpit we were not very impressed even before the above adventure so decided to replace them. The bigger the better was the order of the day so 1.5 inch was the obvious choice. We chose ForesparMarelon seacocks with matching cockpit drains again in Marelon. These are available from Aquafax(Aquafax part numbers 3-80125 and 3-80535; Forespar part numbers 931156 and 906037). As of August 2009, the seacocks cost GBP 71.59 ex. VAT each and the drains cost GBP 11.97 ex. VAT each. Installation instructions can be downloaded from Forespar here.

These were not the easiest things to fit, not because of the seacocks themselves, which are really well made and inspire loads of confidence but due to the complete lack of space under the cockpit of a Corribee. Thankfully we had chosen the 90° ones as otherwise I don’t think we would even have got them in. We also used 1.5 inch 90 degree bends as can be seen in the photo’s and of course double stainless steel Jubilee clips for every connection.

Do they make much difference you may ask? Well once again they have been thoroughly tested, this time in Cardigan bay on two separate occasions and I can vouch for the fact that now you would not even have time to get the soap out.

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