More threat of rain today and over the weekend. We shouldn’t be surprised – it’s pretty typical spring weather. It does disappoint when you have things scheduled that need to be delayed. I only think about it until about 5:00 until my other mindset kicks in. I think they call that
compartmentalization (or so I learned in my Psychology Classes in college).
In any event we WILL be launching today even if we have to get wet – or rather the launch crew will. When Pat got the shaft seal problem fixed yesterday he happened to notice a slight (well if could by any stretch of the imagination
call 1/4″ slight) alignment issue on that issue. You can see in the photo below how the shaft taper starts going into the coupling at an angle, it should be centered going in – not a good thing!
Unfortunately there was not enough room to get hydraulics involved to move the engine into alignment. He had to progress manually through a couple of bars to get the engine to move enough to where it could be fine-tuned. I actually left the boat at this point because you just never know when a knuckle will get busted and
tempers will flare. He did seem pretty calm when he came out relatively unscathed and reported he had got the engine to move.
A few weeks ago (couple of weeks ago, couple of days ago – who knows), I showed a pile of rusty engine brackets and mounts. We decided to clean the mounts up and reuse them. Had they been in a power boat we may have replaced them but sail boats use their engines so little these did not have that much wear
despite being rusty looking. They cleaned up nice and the bolts move freely on the studs. Also the reinstall will be quicker than changing mounts as we know they are an exact fit to the engine stringers.
We have moved a couple of boats to the front parking lot of the Oxford office for a little “drive-by exposure”. John really likes this photo so I am
almost obligated to post it here.
Unfortunately there was not enough room to get hydraulics involved to move the engine into alignment. He had to progress manually through a couple of bars to get the engine to move enough to where it could be fine-tuned. I actually left the boat at this point because you just never know when a knuckle will get busted and tempers will flare. He did seem pretty calm when he came out relatively unscathed and reported he had got the engine to move.
A few weeks ago (couple of weeks ago, couple of days ago – who knows), I showed a pile of rusty engine brackets and mounts. We decided to clean the mounts up and reuse them. Had they been in a power boat we may have replaced them but sail boats use their engines so little these did not have that much wear despite being rusty looking. They cleaned up nice and the bolts move freely on the studs. Also the reinstall will be quicker than changing mounts as we know they are an exact fit to the engine stringers.
We have moved a couple of boats to the front parking lot of the Oxford office for a little “drive-by exposure”. John really likes this photo so I am almost obligated to post it here.
