The other half of this equation is to be sure and use good quality hose clamps. There are many substandard perforated hose clamps out there just waiting to sink your boat. Even clamps marked as "all stainless" these days are often not "all stainless" or the "stainless" is anything but. With off shore sourcing & heavy price competition it has become hard to know what constitutes a good quality perforated clamp vs. junk that may compromise the above water stature of your boat.


This was one of the suspect clamps and it was marked "all stainless". Heck I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the marketers of this "all stainless" clamp. I suspect it might be "stainless" IF you stored it in the Tupperware container with a bag of Damp Rid and stuck in the the Mojave dessert with 12% relative humidity. On a boat in the ocean however it certainly was not "stainless".


I used to keep a bucket of failed perforated hose clamps to show customers and this was but one of them. I no longer install perforated hose clamps for below water applications.