Leaking Beckson Ports

Q: Anyone have any experience in removing and rebedding the Beckson ports on a Cat 34?

My '89 C34 had Beckson ports in the quarter-cabin (by 1989, Catalina switched to Lewmar for the main cabin ports). The ones in the quarter-cabin leaked a tiny bit, so I removed them and rebedded them. They use a standard clamshell arrangement, and it was easy to rebed them with silicone caulk after carefully cleaning off the opening. Most of the leakage problems with the Beckson ports had to do with the gaskets. Specifically, I discovered that the natural urge to tighten the toggles to try to stop leaks is exactly the wrong thing to do!

Overtightening the toggles deforms the gasket and can actually make the leakage worse. Instead, try lightly lubricating the mating surfaces of the gasket with Vaseline (yeah, it's okay, Beckson told me to do it!). The toggles should be adjusted so that there's only light pressure on the gasket; it should be easy to flip the toggle into the locked position.

After 6 years, the gaskets were aging and had lost a lot of their resiliency, so I replaced them (Beckson mailed them to me, asking just $5 for the pair). The new gaskets worked fine, and the ports haven't leaked since.

Norm Bernstein

Beckson port replacement part ordering information: http://www.beckson.com/replace.html