Our stop here in Fort Pierce was meant to be brief. Just long enough to get a few little projects done and for the yard to put new bottom paint on the boat. Unfortunately that’s not what happened… right before we left the Bahamas the starboard side engine developed a little shimmy when shifting into gear. We didn’t think much of it because I found the motor mounts to be super loose. Like the nut on top was 1/4” above the flange. I tightened the mounts up and we went on our way thinking we had solved the problem.
When the boat was on the hard the yard noticed that the bearing for the prop shaft in our strut was worn out. They replaced it easily but after the new one was installed, the shaft would barely turn. While investigating they thought it looked like the actual strut that holds the shaft was out of alignment. That’s… not good.
The fix was to remove the bolts holding the strut and shaft and create a new bed for the shaft to hold it at the correct angle. Luckily I knew exactly where the bolts were located and we had it uninstalled in maybe 15 minutes.
The fix itself was pretty straightforward. We applied multiple coats of mold release wax to the bolts and surface of the strut, then our new friend Dario mixed up some epoxy and filler and we made a putty to shove between the strut and the hull. I was inside the boat tightening the nuts on the bolts until the strut was aligned properly. It cured overnight and the next day we popped the strut off the new bed, cleaned all the wax off, sanded rough edges, and reinstalled the strut to the proper tension with some waterproof sealant!
The yard managed to get this fairly involved repair done in a matter of days (with our help!) and it didn’t even delay us putting True North back in the water!
So we’re ready to go now right? Unfortunately… no. They came back out to do a final alignment on the boat in the water and when jason started the engine and put it in gear it made an awful racket and the motor jumped around. No amount of alignment would fix it. After looking at the engine running it appeared that the prop shaft was bent. That meant that we were ordering a new shaft, waiting a week, and then getting hauled out on a Friday afternoon, paying the guys to work the weekend, and then putting the boat back in the water on Monday morning. Not only was this even more time we had to spend in Fort Pierce when we’re really ready to head north, but this is gonna be expensive. 🙁
I tried to help but there’s really only room for one person around the engine so I let the yard handle it. They got the prop hammered out and everything removed.
To fix this correctly, the motor needed to be aligned perfectly. They set up a string from the back of the transmission through both bushings in the strut and hull.
We went ahead and installed a new bushing where the shaft goes through the hull because of the shaft is out, you might as well! The glue set overnight and the next morning they hammered the new shaft into place and hooked it all back up.
The shitty part about all of this is that once the shaft was out we realized that it wasn’t actually bent at all so we bought a new one and waited for actually no reason. Now we have a spare shaft I guess.
Now everything is as perfect as we can make it and True North went back into the water right after lunch on Monday. A little in water testing showed that she still needs a little minor adjustment in the engine but we should be good to finally head north!
