Bruised, Sore, and Gouged!

Sunday was not a great day working on the boat but a necessary day.

After reviewing the steering and pondering the rudder it appears that the stiffness may be due to an interference between the rudder cutout and the skag that supports it. I hope this can be adjusted via the 4 bolts around the main top bearing or maybe drop the rudder an eigth inch.

I then looked over the prop shaft packing. Hmmm that prop shaft log is original and needs to be replaced. Well I had to undue the packing nuts first. Ohhhh somebody had no idea what tight is. It does NOT NEED to be that tight!! I had to use two bare feet to hold a pipe wrench on the locking collar and my very large Channel locks and both arms on the packing nut. It took both legs and my back to break that damn thing loose. But loose it came..

Now I have to remove the prop shaft from the engine coupling collar. I undid the locking bolts on the shaft and tried to pull -- uhhh no affect. I then tried pulling the prop shaft from outside -- no movement, then I put a nut on the prop shaft and tried to beat it out -- again LOSER!! I was going to have to remove the coupler from its mate. Now these are held together by 4 - 3/8" bolts which should have been torqued to 40 ft lbs. Well after numerous slips of the wrenches and gouging skin on cable ties and bruise knuckles and other body parts on anything else I had to resort to banging on a wrench handle with a hammer!! That put the torque used to tighten these babies in the 100 lb range -- just pure amateur inexperience!!

I got them apart but still could not remove the prop shaft. I will have to press the shaft out by alternately tightening the 2 couplers together with a socket between them -- a very slow painstaking process but effective.

After lunch I started to look seriously at removing the head seacocks. Ohh it does not look good. These Seacocks are the large flange style and bedded in 5200. I put a monkeywrench on one but moved nothing. I think I'll leave this job for the Marina. Not just because of the difficulty but if I do it and it leaks, then I'm looking at another $420 for a round trip to pull the boat out, repair, and relunch. Let's call this insurance.

I was tired, sore, cut, bruised, and a bit disheartened by now so I called it a day a little after 2pm. I needd to recharge before continuing.