Damage Control Kit
$350; www.wheelhousetech.com
If you read this article, you’ll learn about a ton of great products that are designed to keep boaters safe. There are life rings, life rafts, life preservers, and a dizzying amount of electronics such as EPIRBs, PLBs, and AIS; and they are all essential for survival should you find yourself in the water.
But what about the tools for those who don’t intend on giving up their boat without a fight? That’s where a Damage Control Kit from Wheelhouse Technologies comes into play. Designed to help you deal with an assortment of leaks, ranging from a fuel-line rupture to a hull breach, most products in this set are relatively simple to use. Among the items in the standard case are wooden plugs, wooden wedges, silicon sealing tape, oakum, split fire hose, epoxy patches, epoxy putty, hose clamps, duct tape, tarred marlin, a saw, an ax, a floating knife, and other assorted fasteners and hardware.
Beside that assortment of gear is a set of plain-English instructions on how to use each item in various scenarios. For example, if you lose your rudder, there are instructions in big print telling you to fill the hole with oakum and a plug, then use the hammer end of the ax to secure it in the hole. Or if you have a chafed seawater hose, you’ll want to reduce the water pressure if possible with hose clamps, wrap it with silicon tape, then wrap that with duct tape.
A Damage Control Kit might not ever be considered the sexiest of boating products—you rarely hear someone on the dock boasting about a new bag of oakum they purchased—but if you suddenly find yourself with a hole in your hull, something like a simple plug might just become your all-time boating best buy.
This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
