Monday September 24: Deja vu: Back to Wayfarer's Cove on the Neuse River

Dowry Creek is like a home away from home. Each night the owner Mary hosts a happy hour at 5:30 in the clubhouse. And if there are enough boats in, as there were last night, she hosts a pot luck and provides the main dish (in this case spaghetti - yea!!!)

Many of the boaters that were in were MTOA members - the group of trawler owners to which we belong - that were returning from a rendezvous held a couple of days north of here in Portsmouth, VA. One of the guys there was from a trawler that we docked next to in Jacksonville last January. Small world.

So the plan was this: leave Matt and Wendy's, travel 5 days north to the Chesapeake Bay, meet up with former East 55th St Marina dock neighbors Joe and Joy, meet up with Jim and Linda from Edisto Island now on Symmetry II and of course to meet up with Dave from Mary Lee in Baltimore who is almost ready to head south after rebuilding the engine on his sailboat. Then return to Wayfarer's Cove, leave the boat for 3 weeks to go to DC for the Marine Corps Marathon (Matt is running in it) and then on to Ohio for a couple of weeks.

That was plan A. Plan B was to turn around and go back to Wayfarer's Cove. Seems we were taking on water. Not a lot mind you but there can only be two places it can come from. It's either fresh water from our pressurized water system (so the water tank is leaking or a fitting is leaking ....). Or the water is NOT fresh water and is coming from outside the boat. Given the two options, the preference is of course for it to be a leak in the fresh water system.

We were finally able to determine that the water was coming from around the shaft - which of course is never a good thing! One thing we always try to remember is that this boat is now 34 years old and that issues are just going to happen.

So the structure of a shaft log looks like the picture above. The packing gland base is in the inside of the boat. The cutlass bearing base is outside the boat - just forward of the propeller. The 8 foot or so stainless steel shaft goes from the transmission goes in the packing gland, through the metal shaft log and out the cutlass bearing base. The propeller is then attached to the shaft.

Basically then there is a hole in the metal shaft log that is allowing water to seep through and enter the bilge. So the question becomes one of when it is bad enough to fix? Our basic philosophy has become one of this: we can choose the time/place to address this issue or the issue can choose the time/place to fail! So we are back to Wayfarer's Cove to get this work done.

Updates later ....