Marco water pump review

• January 29, 2026 by Sailing Fair Isle |
• Language: EN
• Play Time: 00:13:14
• SAILING YOUTUBERS

After years of problems with our many water pumps on Fair Isle, unreliability, noise and constant maintenance, we were impressed when we came across the display of Marco pumps at METS in Amsterdam this year.
They had all their pumps hooked up to pump water, lots of water! They were whisper quiet in operation, seemed to move enormous amounts of water with great pressure and had no flimsy rubber and plastic parts.
These are 'gear pumps' made with bronze gears, no rubber diaphragms that have to be bashed up and down by cams until they self destruct!
We don't accept payment for producing these review type videos as we think that would turn us into salespeople, but we did get a deal on this pump from Marco at the show so YT require us to reflect that and tick the promotions box. In all honesty, we would have bought one of these pumps in any case. We may not have gone for the biggest model as we do have to watch our spending and these pumps are not cheap. But we have been through four pumps in 9 years on Fair Isle have had to buy boxes of spares in between to keep them running, so that adds up to a significant expense as well. Also, we have had 9 years of having to put up with noisy inefficient pumps so frankly we wish we had spent the money earlier.
You may have seen in the episode when we fitted this pump that it detected there was a problem with the boat's system. Air was somehow getting in to the system at the manifold and was being fed to the pump. This had probably contributed to some of the problems we had had in the past so it's good that the Marco pump is clever enough to show there is a problem.
It seems gear pumps are more sensitive to air getting into the system and the pump will shut down and give you a warning light. This allowed me to find the problem, a stuck one way valve on the outlet of our water manifold, and fix it ( I just removed it, the Marco pump doesn't need it.)
It also doesn't need the accumulator which is good because that's just another thing to go wrong. We are on our second.
So If you're fed up with inferior pumps then Marco is a great option.

Marco Pumps: https://www.marco.it/

Sailing Fair Isle

Steve and Judy: The veteran BBC filmmakers navigating the globe aboard their Hans Christian 48, Fair Isle, blending broadcast-quality storytelling with blue-water grit.

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