Sea Chest - Are they good? What are your thoughts

You can search YF for many comments from the years.
It may still be a split conservation.

I have run a few Strikers and Great Harbors with them.
Our Bert does not have them.

I have no issues with/without..

https://www.yachtforums.com/threads/sea-chests.34691/#post-315341

Search for sea chest. This brings up every time that phrase has been used.
More comments come up from other threads.

To have or not have a sea chest depends on the type of vessel and the lay out of systems. If you have a boat or ship where everything is in the engine room then a sea chest makes sense. But for something like my 54' Sportfish I wouldn't want a sea chest. I have equipment and systems that need raw water and/or discharge in the lazarette, engine room and fwd mechanical spaces under the passageway. I would need piping running all over the place. Much easier and less complicated to just put a thru-hull where you need them.

I don’t care much about intake sea chest but o like discharge sea chests. Hatteras used to do that back in the days, I have 5 of them along the hull sides. They re just like half pipes built into the fiberglass with a single discharge at the water line. No streaks on the hull, don’t see a bunch of holes all over the hull sides.

Down side is that you can’t see each discharge like to view flow out of eaxh AC and the bottom hole needs to be big enough for everything connected to each sea chest.

I think…. “Whatever” is the correct answer. There are far more important things to consider like drink holders, flat screen TVs, and fancy styling

For appropriate vessels, I consider sea chests to be a positive feature. In addition to ease of cleaning strainers, I would assume the less holes in your boat, the better...

The vast majority of vessels with sea chests employ electrolytic anti fouling systems in the sea chests to keep them free from hard growths such as barnacles, mussels etc. Cathelco is the major player in this arena and they've been producing sea chest systems for over 40 yrs. now. Other options for sparkling clean sea chests would be dosing systems using a chlorine generator converting sea water into sodium hyper chloride to low and slow dose like the Electro Sea systems being marketed with proprietary sea strainers primarily in the sport fish market now.