The S4 Microskiff is offered without scuppers because typically there isn’t enough water accumulating in its hulls to justify a special drainage device, especially since wiping the water with a big towel does the job in most cases, and in the rare cases when there is enough water on the bottom of a hull to allow for priming a manual or electric pump, using one drains the water within seconds, and so does a simple hand bucket.
Some S4 Microskiff owners outfit it with scuppers, usually because they have to use a garden hose to rinse plenty of dirt and fish blood out of the hulls, which requires draining out a lot of water.
Note that drilling large diameter holes in the cockpit rim works as well as scuppers in the stern, and it just requires flipping the boat.
Installing a scupper below waterline is hazardous, and therefore, the favorite place for installing these accessories is around the top of the hulls’ rear tips, as seen below. This is a good place, except that it requires flipping the boat in order to drain the water out, and it restricts visibility and access when you spray water into the hulls – It’s no big deal, just somehow inconvenient.
Alternatively, the picture on the top of the page shows a scupper installed on the underside of the bow tip, high above the waterline.
This forward location allows for rinsing the interior of the hulls with a hose without flipping the boat. However, this plug location requires raising the stern considerably (see below picture) for drainage to be effective – a pulley can help in such case.
Note that the scupper in this frontal location does not interfere with the usage of the bow tip handles.
Generally, we recommend removing the plug from the scupper hole when draining the boat in order to avoid clogging as much as possible.