Projects / Maintenance

Sun 18 Apr, HHN day 5: Cleaning prop-shaft, vinyl wrapping clutch bases, removing aquadrive, cleaning PSS pieces.

For some reason, Sunday became a bit of a chill day. It was an active day, but not much to show for it.
Before I get into what happened, I’ll just mention this: When I arrived, I fully expected Cloudy Bay to throw some tricks at me, which is quite normal when we leave her alone for more than a few weeks. Well, I’ve found 2 so far. She broke the Nespresso coffee machine, which no longer seems to work. And today, for the first time since my arrival, I tried to use the cooker only to discover no gas. The bottle is full, taps are open and I can hear the safety valve solenoid click …. But no gas at the cooker ☹. So I’ll have to investigate how Cloudy Bay has managed to sabotage it. Most likely the safety valve, because she will know for sure that is the most difficult part to get to! Last year her best trick was the galley faucet. She had a real good giggle watching me struggle to change that!

In the morning, it’s a beautiful clear spring day, so I decide to do some outside work. Pull the prop-shaft out through the P-bracket, remove all the PropSpeed paint and generally give it clean. Once pulled out the boat, I do notice that the area of the shaft that had been in the cutlass bearing had quite an amount of calcium deposited on it. Maybe this is the reason our cutlass bearings were not lasting very long? Also, for the first time, I can get into the hole in the hull where the shaft comes out and remove the remnants of 12 years of various calcium depositing beasts. I’ll get a good dollop of antifoul paint in there before the shaft goes back in … for another 12 years hopefully.

Midmorning, Ray arrives with the promised skateboard. He had managed to persuade his nephew to part with it. Tomorrow I will attempt skateboarding the life-raft down the side deck as I crawl after it. That could make an interesting video!

While Ray is here, I get him to assist me in removing the last 2 clutches on the port side. He unscrews from the deck while I hold a spanner in the ceiling void below deck. Once off, we debate about the mounts that the clutches sit on. It appears they are made of similar material to the dorade vents, in that the lacquer coating has cracked and gone a horrible yellow colour.
I want to remove them to paint them, but silly me, I had sikaflexed them to the deck in 2017 and now (obviously!) they will not budge. If I try hitting them harder, they will likely come off with ½ the teak deck attached. And I do not want to lever them off because that for sure will damage the deck. Ray suggests just painting them in situ, but I know how that will go: even with a good masking job, paint will seep into the teak and look horrible. So, looks like we will just have to live with the ugly yellowing.
But then I have an idea…. maybe I will get some white vinyl and wrap them. Vinyl wrapping cannot be that difficult, can it? I mean, I think I used to do a pretty good job covering school textbooks with sticky-backed-plastic! We still have some blue vinyl left from when we had the stripes (professionally) wrapped, so I decide to give it a go. First attempt was not good. But then I got better at it, and after 2 hours we now have 4 blue wrapped clutch mounts! And I have to say, they look pretty sexy. Surely, no other HR will have those! … or have such an idiotic Captain 😊. Oana had a huge laugh about it when I told her in the afternoon.

Last job of the day is getting the CV joint down on the ground along with all the aquadrive bolts and degrease them. Jeez, that CV is a heavy beast! Then, back in the boat, I remove the aquadrive itself, with the intention to pull it apart and check the bearing. Once off, I notice the front lipseal is hanging out. Then I remembered. Back in 2018, in a yard in Lanzarote, I had the yard change the cutlass bearing – because I did not know how to. Thinking they must know what they are doing, I left them to it. But they had no idea and had tried removing the prop-shaft by just taking any screws out of the aquadrive that they could see. Result: they did not get the shaft out (I stopped them!) and clearly, they did not put the aquadrive back together correctly. It’s experiences like this that enforce me to do all the maintenance myself. Professionals are not always…

Lastly, I take a look at the PSS parts that I intend to retain. The rubber bellow will be replaced, but the carbon seal face and the stainless ring should normally be OK. But I’m not sure. There is a lot of calcium deposits in it, which I clean out, but it still looks pretty rough. I’ll email the guys at PYI Inc with some pics, see what they have to say.

Monday tomorrow. But the good thing about working on a Sunday, is that Monday isn’t really a Monday, right?