Tuesday, October 11, 2011

From the Captain

The engine and transmission are OK now.  The mechanic came and took things apart and we found the prop shaft dragging.  I dove to check again, but this time with scuba so I could take my time.  Found a piece of small rope wrapped tight and drawn into the cutlass bearing, the water lubricated bearing just before the prop. I managed to pull that out and that was the binding. It also turned out that the alignment was off and one of the engine mounts had worked loose, so, altogether it was, perhaps a fortunate event since that could have led to another bearing failure.

So, no damage to anything, learned something - besides the fact that I was wrong with where I thought the problem was, and once more have come to appreciate mechanics.  I motored across the harbor and I'm now anchored off a small island, ready to head out in the morning.  The boat is full of mosquitos - wish I knew why / how they came in.  Didn't seem to be any around at the dock.  Anyway, I spent a bunch of time cleaning the bottom of the boat so hopefully NZ quarantine people will be appeased enough not to be really difficult.

Not much else to add, leaving tomorrow in company with a couple of other boats but they are bigger than I, with crew, so they'll leave me behind quickly.  Other boats leaving tomorrow - there's a stream of boats now heading to NZ.  Hopefully the weather will hold.

All in all, I'm not looking forward to this passage, and I'll be really glad when it's done.

Take care
Love  Dad
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At 09/10/2011 4:26 AM (utc) our position was 21°08.34'S 175°11.06'W

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