That Which Didn’t Sink a Ship

I’m now finished with phase two of Sojourn’s repower project.  The engine bay is clean and painted and Sojourn is waiting to be powered by Kubota (in the absence of wind of course).

I cleaned the engine bay, first with Greased Lightning, which I’ve found to be a very good surfactant in the past, then simple green and scrub brush, vacuuming the resultant gray foam with a shop vac to keep it out of the bilge.  I then coated it with two coats of Interlux BilgeKote on two consecutive days.  The only two problems I had were that the shaft packing was dripping too fast for the bottle and the rag I placed under it and there were traces of grease showing up in the roller.  Time will tell if the latter causes any adhesion issues.

One thing I did in preparation was remove the shaft flange so that I could modify it. The Volvo had a metric bolt circle slightly different than the imperial one of the Technodrive. I would not bother to modify this eighty dollar part if I didn’t essentially have a machine shop at my disposal.

Getting to the subject and title of this post, I woke up in the middle of the night realizing that Sojourn’s slip is subject to river currents and there was nothing preventing the prop shaft from working its way out of the stuffing box should a current cause the prop to turn.  Could the bilge pump keep up with a 3/4 inch hole in the hull?  Perhaps for a while, but not something I wanted to learn empirically, so I stole away on my lunch break to check on it.  Thankfully, it hadn’t moved.  I installed a piece of hose and hose clamp on the prop shaft and headed back to work anticipating a better night’s sleep tonight. 

The next time an opportunity presents itself, I’ll have to remember to offer a little extra wine to the old man in the sea.