With the moldy vinyl hull covering replaced and the aft cabin re assembled, the time came to turn my attention to some of the issues we have faced with the Sabre’s plumbing.
First, the faucets in both the aft head and the forward cabin looked crappy. Time to yank them and replace with some Home Depot replacements.
Out with the old!For these two sinks, contemporary replacements can be found with the identical hole pattern and water line attachment.Much better! Easy, and not expensive. The galley sink was a much bigger problem. Long story short, there is no way to replace the faucet on this boat without cutting a hole in the back of the settee forward of the sink. I weighed the options, then decided to make a run at dis-assembling it to see if there were any user-replaceable parts. With the faucet apart, I learned that the reason the faucet dripped no matter how hard we screwed down the taps was that the rubber gaskets designed to stop the water flow had dried out and become compressed to a fraction of their original width.I measured their dimensions and a bit of web searching showed me that finding direct replacements would be impossible. I would either need to replace the entire faucet, or find way to modify the existing gaskets. Modification of the existing gaskets was the shorter path by far, so why not try? I used some wet dry sand paper to sand through the dried out portions of the gasket to reach the supple, moist rubber underneath. Next I fished out some rubber gasket material I had lying around the shop, and cut out shims to increase the thickness of the original gaskets. Hmmmm… it looked promising! I cleaned and lubricated the original internal helix mechanism and re assembled the components.
It worked!!!!!!! And this process was a tiny fraction of the work of cutting into the boat to replace them entirely.
This is timely – we need to do the same replacement ( at least for the cabin and head sinks. Would you mind sharing what the replacement faucet model was – I do like that version?
@John D I found the documents for the faucets: they are Glacier Bay Aragon 4 Inch Centerset 2 handle low arc bathroom faucets. Hopefully you can find them in Home Depot!
thanks – I will look for those today. Looking forward to other project write-ups as we try to improve our own 38 mk2, currently on the South River.
@John D I found the documents for the faucets: they are Glacier Bay Aragon 4 Inch Centerset 2 handle low arc bathroom faucets. Hopefully you can find them in Home Depot!
John wrote: <<thanks – I will look for those today. Looking forward to other project write-ups as we try to improve our own 38 mk2, currently on the South River.>>
Sounds good John – post back with your progress! We just launched and are getting sails on and all cleaned up.
Rover's Blog 
Very impressive! In this, you really prove what tenacious patience and determination can do! Cheers!
This is timely – we need to do the same replacement ( at least for the cabin and head sinks. Would you mind sharing what the replacement faucet model was – I do like that version?
@John D I found the documents for the faucets: they are Glacier Bay Aragon 4 Inch Centerset 2 handle low arc bathroom faucets. Hopefully you can find them in Home Depot!
thanks – I will look for those today. Looking forward to other project write-ups as we try to improve our own 38 mk2, currently on the South River.
@John D I found the documents for the faucets: they are Glacier Bay Aragon 4 Inch Centerset 2 handle low arc bathroom faucets. Hopefully you can find them in Home Depot!
John wrote: <<thanks – I will look for those today. Looking forward to other project write-ups as we try to improve our own 38 mk2, currently on the South River.>>
Sounds good John – post back with your progress! We just launched and are getting sails on and all cleaned up.