May 27, 2010.

Christy has started her new job this week and despite being sore as hell she seems to be enjoying it. She’s working for a small contractor refinishing people’s brightwork. She’s had to endure a couple of really hot days so far and thing are looking good as far as her not bursting into flames. She’s getting good money and it seems like she’ll be kept reasonably busy so as far as the whole “job” thing goes. Things are good as far as her job is concerned.

I’m working on a trawler that seems to have a jinx of some kind. We’ve got a whole punchlist of work to be performed but everything we’ve taken apart so far has led to another issue. So as we check off one item a new issue presents itself. I feel bad for the guy, but it is what it is.

I started by removing the rudder so I could get to the rudder post. He’s been having a bad leak at the rudder post and the stuffing box was completely seized up. After liberal doses of PB Blaster, a bit o’ swearing, brute force and some fire the stuffing box did finally come apart. This enabled me to drop the rudder post out. I figured I’d clean the post and the stuffing box up and put it all back together and everything would be all worky worky. But no. Once out of the boat the rudder shaft was found to be extremely corroded to the point of being hour glass shaped and a new one will have to be fabricated. Sucks for him. Welcome to boating.

We also discovered that the cutlass bearing on the prop shaft was no good. It was so bad and the alignment so far off that the prop shaft had worn completely through one side of the cutlass bearing to the point of scoring the 16 foot long shaft. I think he can get away with the same shaft but we’ll see what he decides to do. So let’s add an alignment to the list.

While I was busy fondling the back of the boat “Bob” was taking apart the windlass. The owner was complaining of intermittent operation. He removed the windlass motor and while he was there he noticed that there didn’t seem to be any oil in the sightglass. So he opened it up and it was so dry inside that there was a tiny Mexican town complete with tumbleweeds and dirt devils swirling about. Captain, intermittent? You’re lucky it works at all.

It’s a beautiful boat inside and it’s a shame that all of these little niggling maintenance issues have become a rather long list. But we’ll keep plugging along…..