An old friend of mine who has sailed for a whole lot more years than i have, told me that you should try not to let to much surprise you on your boat, by that he meant that you should pull stuff apart and see how or why it works when your tied up to a mooring or berth, so you know how to or what to do when you have to, and probably in not the nicest of conditions, another of his suggestions was to open a valve or in my case remove a through hull and see just how much water comes through the hole into your boat, how much pressure is behind the water and how hard or easy it is to stop the flow, if you do that under a controlled situation, if or when you do have water coming into your boat, you hopefully will then have some idea as to how bad the situation is. So with that little bit of knowledgem replacing a through hull with the boat in the water wasn't that big a deal, or maybe i was just lucky to get it right.

Ben 405