Still hanging in there
By Mike Jastrzebski
We’re still in the yard, the leaky shaft connection has proven to be much more of an issue than we expected. After hours of drilling out the two stainless steel bolts and a couple of hundred dollars of carbide tipped drill bits, the shaft remained frozen to the shaft collar. Salt water, different metals and time will do that.
We ended up hiring someone to help and he was unable to loosen the shaft. Fortunately he was able to get the shaft collar loose from the transmission. He then cut the shaft just in front of the collar and we had to have a new shaft made and purchase a new shaft collar. Here’s a picture of the shaft collar and shaft before it was cut.
The biggest downside of all of this is that the shaft had to be made and the collar ordered. The parts will not be ready until Wednesday of this week so we’ll be lucky to be back in the water by next weekend. Hopefully my next post will be written where it should be written–on the water.
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