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Plastic does not corrode but it does shrink and become brittle with age. Get back to us in a decade or two and let us know how those plastic drain tubes are holding up.

It should be noted that when discussing plastic drain tubes, there are two distinctly different approaches:

- PVC drain pipe finished flush with the hull, which Whaler used themselves for the anchor lockers on some larger models as drains (but NEVER below the waterline).

- Preformed flanged plastic drains tubes in two pieces that snap together. Whaler uses these now at the factory.

If using the former technique, you either use drain pipe that has a 3/4" id, instead of 1", thus restricting your draining capacity by 45 percent - OR - you have to drill a larger hole in your hull to accommodate the much great diameter of 1" id pipe. Once you've drilled that hole in your hull, there is never any going back, you're stuck with it.

Furthermore, there are drain tubes on many Whalers where the tube is placed very close to an adjacent surface. Enlarging the hole would put the edge of the hole on a different plane where it cannot be finished cleanly. Indeed I have seem drains in the rigging tunnels of Montauks so far down that if you enlarged the holes at all, you would be cutting into the bottom of the tunnel.

Even if the hole for the tube comes out on a flat surface on both sides of the hull, gluing in a PVC pipe relies entirely upon the glue joint between the pipe itself and the edge of the fiberglass hull skin which is only 1/8" - 1/4" wide on most Whaler hulls. Coating the entire tube with epoxy or polyurethane caulk does nothing but make it difficult or impossible to replace the tube in the future. Gluing it to the foam does nothing to prevent water intrusion because once there is a gap between the pipe and the fiberglas, water can get in behind the glued surface of the tube where it is glued to the foam.

The preformed flange can help solve that problem by providing a good overlap of drain and hull, but then you have to deal with several other problems.

The preformed flange is formed perpendicular to the tube itself. This is great if the hole in your hull for the drain tube is perpendicular to the hull's surfaces. The problem is that is very rarely the case. Even the simplest situation, a splashwell drain tube going through the transom, is often not drilled square. Try a drain tube on a bow locker on a 22 or the stern sump in an 11 footer. No way is it going to be easy.

The bow sump in the 22s are perhaps the worst of all. The drain tubes emerge out of that hull at an angle of over 20 degrees. There is no way the pre-formed flange will meet the hull cleanly.

Andy Gere has some personal experience on his Outrage Cuddy 22 with the pre-formed drain tubes he bought from a Whaler dealer. He had to first drill the hull larger to accommodate the plastic, and then tried the get the plastic to bend to accommodate the shape of his hull. The results were not satisfactory.

I helped Andy replace the rest of his drain tubes with brass and O-ring tubes. We would have redone the plastic one except because he drilled out the hull, there was no going back; it had to stay.

If you try to use a preformed tube in a spot where the hole in the hull is driller near an adjacent surface, the flange gets in the way. I saw a newer Sport 130 at my outboard mechanic's shop that had the factory installed plastic drain tube in the stern. The hole was drilled very near the floor and because of this, the flange interfered with it drawing up tight against the hull. It was left about 3/8" out with no visible caulk to fill the void. It was just unbelievably bad.

But let's say you get lucky and have a spot where the drain tube hole is perpendicular to the hull and you can get the flange to lay flat against it. That will work, right? Not if it is in a spot where it needs to be protected by a clam shell.

Because the flange on the plastic drain tubes is so much larger, the standard Perko 2" x 2" clam shell ventilator that Whaler used will not fit. Oh sure, you could swap it out for a much larger one, but then you are drilling five new screw hole sin the bottom of your hull and filling the five old screw holes too. You end up with a massive clam shell with added drag and greater venerability of being crushed by your trailer. No thanks.

By using the brass drain tubes with O-rings and caulk, you can make the flange fit in very tight spaces and conform to irregular shapes and angles. They are inexpensive easy to replace and maintain full water flow for quick draining. Yes, I concede the use of a PVC drain tube or even a poorly fitting preformed drain tube may be fine for a small cream-puff Whaler that is dusted off and brought out of the carport for the occasional run around the lake, it is certainly not going to be satisfactory for larger Whalers that live in the water and get used hard as mine does.