[Public-List] Stern Tube Update

[Daniel Swords]

    Sorry for the delay, I myself get frustrated when left hanging by open threads. But so far not much has happened  My local boat yard closed about a month ago. Really unfortunate timing for me as they were very good and reasonable and had serviced this boat for many years plus they were literally minutes from my slip and my apartment.     Since the local yard closed I took my boat to what I will call the “fancy” boat yard across the lake, a 24 mile sail and a $100 taxi ride away. They have been in business for a long time but their estimate to fix the problem was more than the value of the boat. So I thanked them for their estimate and sailed home.     Today I drove over to another “not so fancy” boat yard. They actually took the time to study the cross sectional drawing of the prop shaft and stern tube in the Alberg 30 maintenance manual. They were somewhat familiar with the boat because they had once supplied a new 7/8” prop shaft and cutlass bearing for it. They even took the time to give me a tour of their boat yard. So my next step will be to sail over (about a 20 mile sail) so they can see the boat and give me an estimate. Unfortunately their yard is small, their dock space is limited and they are working on several wooden boats in preparation for an upcoming annual wooden boat festival. So it will be a couple of weeks before they can get to me.      I live about 3 blocks away from my boat and I sleep on it often. I also sail almost every day and I have two good bilge pumps and two good batteries and shore power so I am fairly comfortable that the boat won’t sink while a wait for an estimate and hopefully a haul out.    If this yard also gives me an unaffordable estimate my third option will be a DIY boatyard where I will haul out the boat and do the work myself. I hesitate to do this because I am alone and will have no help and I have no tools and no desire to have any tools and no desire to learn any maintenance skills.      So it may be several weeks before I follow up with the happy conclusion to this tale. But I do thank all of you for your input and information!  It gives me great hope that there will be a reasonable, even possibly a simple fix to the problem. In the meantime I will keep sailing, in fact I just got in about 10:30 tonight from a wonderful night sail (except that the bilge pump cam on three or four times to remind me not to forget about the leak) :-)

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