Secure your muskrat guard with a lanyard?

[HeadedToTexas]

Here in the Great Lakes, muskrats can enter partially submerged exhaust systems and chew through rubber couplings. Even if they just move in to the water lift muffler, nothing good comes from them. One solution is to install a Muskrat Guard from Hurley Marine. Hurley says some people install them with a lanyard secured to the boat to prevent loss, or at least give you a chance to reinstall if it pops out.

A suitable 2mm stainless cable can easily be added to one of the bolt "arms" of the guard and secured to the stainless swim platform brace. Here are my questions.

1. If the bolts work loose and the guard pops out, will it wear out that stainless cable before I discover it allowing the guard to disappear anyway?
2. Despite everything being "stainless," will subtle differences in the alloys allow galvanic corrosion to eat through the cable making it useless in a matter of weeks?
3. Will blue Loctite hold up under water if it is allowed to set up completely on the hard this winter?

 

[Comodave]

I put them on my last boat and never had any problems. They were on our current boat when I bought it so I don’t know how long they have been there but no lanyards.

 

[AlaskaProf]

WOW! Long ago, I lived aboard in Seattle's Lake Union (Gas Works, for you Northwesterners). Many muskrats lived under the docks; you could watch them snatch passing baby ducks. I never heard of this kind of infiltration.

"You can't let nature run wild." --Walter Hickel

 

[rslifkin]

Personally, I'd prefer a more permanently mounted solution than those guards.



I've been debating changing the stainless exhaust ports on my boat for fiberglass and changing the discharge angle (once I confirm what it'll take to kill the station wagon effect problem under certain conditions). My original stainless ports have a ring with a few slats running across riveted into the end of the output. I keep thinking about what I could potentially make that would work in a fiberglass port (or if I'd just make a similar set of stainless slatted rings that could be riveted, epoxied, or whatever in place).

 

[HeadedToTexas]

Several boats around me have these Hurley guards and I have yet to see one with a lanyard. If I Blue Loctite the bolts in place while on the hard this winter, the Loctite will have months to cure. From what I can find, once cured, Loctite does not soften or loosen when submerged. You guys have the same experience?

 

[Comodave]

I didn’t even use a thread locker on mine. Just tightened them good. It was tricky to tighten them up because you have to do it evenly or it would pop out as you tighten it. But I got it done, took about 1/2 hour to do both and they never came out.

 

[HeadedToTexas]

Roger that. The threads on the other ones I see on boats here in storage are pretty well crusted in place. Makes sense. Thanks Dave.