2.3.17 Friday
Today started with Jason cutting
my drive shaft in half. It turned out
the carrier bearing was ‘frozen’ solid on the shaft. (rusted? Diesel Don asked me, "when was the last time you greased that zirt?" What zirt?) To get the shaft out of the boat we would
either; A.) spend lots of time and $$$
on labor to cut the bearing off the shaft.
B.) cut the shaft in two and buy a new one.
Jason
Well CRAP! I don’t like either
choice. But if I get a new drive shaft I
can put in a new dripless coupling instead of that leaky old cutlass bearing on the stuffing box I
have now. I’ll have a dry bilge…. I can put back in the transmission with a new
rear seal and all new shaft parts knowing that it will outlast my
lifetime. That’s a good feeling. (I'll only get shafted one more time!)
So Jason showed up around 9am and
cut the bearing out of the middle of the 1 1/4" x 9' stainless steel shaft. Now we just need the scuba divers back to
pull the shaft out of the boat. (we will
stick a short piece of stainless into the stuffing box to keep from
flooding the boat.
Diesel Don
Chris & Derrick
But wait, there's more! At 1pm two riggers showed up to
swap out the Garmin wind instrument – the one that the Osprey stole – at the top of the
mast. They got pretty far along in the
project when up drives Diesel Don and the 2 scuba divers from OCD. *Oops Don forgot the plug. A couple of minutes and he’s back with
it. It only takes a couple of minutes to
pull the shaft and clog the hole.
Curt
Will
About ten minutes later the
riggers were done and gone. I was wiped
out from all the activity. (normally I
can watch people work for hours, but that was a lot to supervise.) We had 6 dingys tied to the back of Prodigal. One guy on top of the mast and one diver under the keel. I really need a day off!
Now to order a new shaft. -Skip
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