Prop Shaft Removal

After my struggles with the Allen bolts in the prop shaft clamp a year or two ago, I wasn't looking forward to this. At the time I gave them a good soak in WD40, and this seems to have penetrated - I got them out fairly easily this time.

I didn't realise that there were also two grub screws in one side of the clamp until a friend specualated that there might be ... they were pretty well disguised with rust and dirt.

I opened the clamp using a couple of chisels which I cut down and modified for the job:

The biggest problem, in the end, was dealing with the key in the shaft at the inboard end. This was made of stainless steel, and I couldn't get it out. Access is very difficult.

In the end, I had to grind it off - this was scary and took a lot of preparation (wooden blocks, a hose to wet things down, a handy fire extinguisher...).

Once I removed the Cutless bearing, I could draw the shaft past the skeg on the starboard side. It was a bit of a squeeze.

The engine and shaft are slightly swung to starboard to make this possible. Otherwise, the engine would have to come out to draw the shaft.

I was disappointed to find that my (fairly new) Cutless bearing was quite worn and that the shaft was also worn in the same area. Somehow, the water wasn't getting into the bearing?

This will need some thought. I'm getting a new shaft made - I'm worried about the pitting I saw earlier, and also now by the wear.

Rudder removal

This was, slightly unexpectedly, a stinker of a job.

I thought the shoe on the bottom of the skeg would present difficulties, but the silicon bolts actually came out readily, and the shoe was easy to remove.

The rudder head, however, was a different issue. I've come to the conclusion that this could only have been fitted by heating up the bronze casting (very considerably) and then pressing it onto the shaft. It was extremely difficult to get off, and I ended up damaging the thread and the nut with a sledgehammer.

Once I had got it to move slightly I could get a puller under it. With a lot of heat, this finally got it out. I now have a bit of an engineering challenge repairing the thread and replacing the nut:

A man is coming to look at it on Friday ... 

I can think of a few solutions. None of them will be cheap.

I also have the problem of getting the bronze rudder head fitting back onto the shaft. I will get advice on this. It might be worth getting it very slightly reamed. The rudder actually hangs by this fitting - the bottom of the stock is located in the skeg shoe, but it doesn't rest on it.

And, as it happens, all the bearings look fine ...

The rudder needed to come out for another reason, which was to allow clear access to the skeg for copper-coating:

Knowing what I know now, I might have passed on this ...

Coppercoat Preparation

 

We used Peelaway Marine to strip the existing antifouling. It took two tubs, and we could probably have done with using a third ... It's quite expensive, but a lot cheaper than many days of scraping and sanding. Some of the first layer of AF (the black) didn't entirely come off, but scraped down fairly easily.

Under the antifouling we found a layer that we are reasonably confident (!) is a two part epoxy primer applied on top of the old coppercoat. Coppercoat reckons this is a good base.

There was still a good deal of sanding to do to prepare the surface - 80 grit, and about four days work.

If we've got all the nooks and crannies done by this weekend, the next step will be to skirt the hull and use a big diesel heater to warm it up ...

In the Shed ...

Raasay is in the shed in Lossiemouth marina, getting a few major mods and repairs:

• Coppercoat
• Prop shaft replacement
• Stern gland removal and repair (rusty grease injector ...)
• Rudder removal and bearing inspection
• Deck painting

Having the mast down will also allow a thorough rig inspection and masthead tricolour repair.

Plus any additional issues that come to light in the course of these ...

There have been a few issues, which I'll do separate posts on ...

Video: Raasay going into the shed

Portmahomack and Back

 

I wanted to test the Aries, having freed the bearings and reassembled it. It was a qualified success (the patient didn't die, but there was some chronic disability ...)

First of all: I couldn't figure out why the bearings had begun to seize up. The original nylon bearings were prone to swell in salt water, but I replaced these with acetal a few years ago. Anyhow, I used a round file to gently open them up until the servo paddle could rotate freely.

Then I saw a post (Stuart Banjo) on the Aries Facebook group - apparently, corrosion in the metal housing can compress the bearing and cause them to seize ... I'm too late to experiment with that I guess, as cleaning the corrosion now would leave mine too loose ... ?

Anyhow, the paddle now works perfectly. Except not quite - I managed to reassemble the gear one notch out. So it's off the boat again and on its way to my cellar workshop to correct this.

Then, finally, everything should be fine.

The weather has been weird, and 'Windy' a bit unreliable ... When I sailed on Friday I expected light conditions, but found myself close reaching into 20 knots of wind. Maybe a local anomaly? It didn't last long. 

It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't optimistically left Lossiemouth dressed in shorts and a light shirt.

Raasay and Rhum in Lossiemouth

 

Raasay and Rhum in Lossiemouth - I wonder how long it is since they have been parked up together?

Fifty years?

The Complete Trip

 

I'll post more about this in due course. I also have a Flickr album of photos which I will be adding to as I get a bit more organised.

There were some cringy moments:  I think my anchor dragged in Shetland more often than it has in the last five years; an awkward entry and exit from Out Skerries, including two close encounters with grounding (one with a bump or two, one without); clumsily rafting up to Saecwen in Lerwick, after our trip round Bressay.

Somewhere between brushing these off and allowing them to terrify me there is some 'zone of proximal development' which I may live long enough to benefit from.

Portmahomack to Lossiemouth

 

Last hop. If I had left PM earlier, I'd have caught the tide at Lossiemouth - My last chance to get in would have been about 11:30 am.

Instead, I had to anchor off for a few hours and go in a little after five pm.

That's what the notch down towards Covsea is - I got in behind the Skerries near a sandy beach, packed up some stuff, got ready to tie up, and had a snooze. Snoozes rank highly among my sailing pass-times - a fact that is probably related to my failure to properly think about tide times.

The late entry meant that I only had one option for getting home on Friday night - a bus that left Lossiemouth at about 9:00 pm to get a train that arrived in Aberdeen at a quarter to midnight. Which was ten minutes after the last bus that could have taken me home.

A taxi would have been expensive, but acceptable. Except that there weren't any as it was Friday night, so I had to walk home, trailing my wheely bag.

Carrie came to meet me halfway. In case I was wandering aimlessly in a daze ... She would have given me a lift, but the car had a flat battery. A rare event, perfectly timed.

The next morning I spent some time getting the car started - this was a bit of a comedy involving a battery from the cellar that I thought was charged, some jump leads that didn't work (!), a neighbour, a battery charger, a prophylactic purchase of a new battery which had to be returned ... Oh, anyway. A return trip to Lossiemouth brought it all back into service.

Why did I go back to Lossiemouth?

To take the rest of my stuff off the boat. And to bring home the Aries.

I don't think I mentioned this, but early in the trip, I realised that the vertical bearing for the servo-paddle was a bit sticky, rendering the whole unit useless. I stared at it in resentment more than once while trying to fix the tiller pin problem off Fair Isle.

Anyone who has tried to remove an Aries unit from a floating boat will know the level of sheer incoherent bloody-minded determination this requires. This was amply supplied by my sense that the sooner I could get it fixed, the sooner I could forget how annoying it was carrying it around as deadweight for four weeks.

I also dropped one of the mounting bolts in the marina. It could, of course, have been much worse ... 

Sinclair's Bay to Portmahomack

 

Another quite long slog - the straight line says it all - under power until the last couple of hours or so, when the East wind appeared. It was blowing 15-18 knots by the time I anchored in Portmahomack. I was worried about the shelter, but it's fine - less rolly than Sinclair's Bay.

52 miles in about 10 hours.

Kirkwall to Sinclair's Bay

 

I spend two nights in Kirkwall and got showered, clothes washed, groceries, fuel, and water. And slept some more.

Today (Tuesday) I sailed from Kirkwall to Sinclair's Bay. Homeward march.

The weather was good - a little rain early in the day, but bright otherwise. The wind was steady, mostly 12-16 knots from the NW.

Unfortunately, there is still some residual swell from the NE weather a few days ago (the wind that took me from Fair Isle to Kirkwall). Sinlcair's Bay is a bit rolly as a consequence. It should reduce overnight. It won't stop me from sleeping.

I may go to Portmahomack tomorrow, and visit Tain on Thursday. Then I'll head back to Lossiemouth on Friday.

Fair Isle to Kirkwall

The long straight line makes this look very straightforward, but if you could Zoom in on the first hour or so, you would see this:

This is what is called a 'bad start'. As I left North Haven in Fair Isle the autohelm actuator suddenly jumped off the tiller - I thought at first that I must have knocked it off, but then I realised that the little pin on the tiller that it engaged with had disappeared. I didn't stop to take a picture, but here is what it looked like after my jury-rigged repair:

There wasn't a lot of wind, but there was an awkward complex wave pattern that made the boat roll heavily and pitch a lot. I was sure that the original pin must have fallen somewhere I could find it, so I spent half an hour in those conditions getting everything off the floor of the cockpit so that I could lift the grating and look under it. It wasn't there. I'm also not sure now whether I could have re-used it if I had found it, but ...

I thought about taking the boat back into North Haven, but decided instead to attempt a repair where I was. I couldn't keep the boat on a course, so let it meander round in circles with the engine at low revs. I had to dig out some potential bolts from a deep repository of spares in the fo'c'sle, but then discovered that the hole had a sharp edge - possibly the remains of a thread (whose failure explained the loss of the pin?) and I had to open it up a bit before I could reuse it. Finding tools and doing this was nasty, in the conditions.

Unpleasant motion can be tiring, and while there is more risk of injury or exhaustion (or perhaps sea-sickness), the motion itself is not intrinsically dangerous. It can be hard to convince your amygdala of this, however ..

The final arrangement worked, but it took me an hour or more to arrive at it. I'll have to refashion it properly while I'm in Kirkwall. The rest of the trip went fairly well.

The early part was less windy than I'd hoped, and the wind moved up to a beam reach part way through. I'd hoped to run down to Kirkwall, or at least to Bay of Holland (on Stronsay) under the headsail. Once the wind moved forward, though, I had to raise the main. Then the wind rose a bit, sometimes to 16-18 knots, which made the sailing a bit more aggressive but also speeded me up a lot. The extra speed put Kirkwall within reach, and the prospect of showers, laundry, and shopping drew me on.

Overall, I did about 60 miles in almost exactly twelve hours, including the messing around off Fair Isle, which is fairly creditable. Much of it was reaching, and then close-reaching, at five and a half to six and a half knots, which translated to more than seven over the ground (with the help of the tide).

I was glad to get here, though.