Well, we have now got some movement on the issue. Stewart and Karen from Pampero anchored next to us yesterday and he brought his diving skills to bear and we were able to get the propeller off. This showed the good news that neither the propeller nor the shaft were significantly damaged but that the keyway holding the two together had corroded away. Now all we need to do is to get a new keyway made up and we can then refit the prop and be on our way, all at a fraction of the price of a new prop and/or prop shaft. This is just as well as it now transpires that our batteries are shot to pieces and need replacing as they are not holding any sort of charge.
The next stage was to find some suitable metal to make a new key. The local chandler here in Fort de France would not be any use but we had hopes of one of the shops or such like in Marin and Pampero had hired a car as they needed some spare parts for their own boat. We drove down and after a lot of trawling round for both batteries and keys we found some stainless steel that would serve the purpose even though it was about twice as thick and deep as we would need. Pampero has an angle grinder which would make taking the excess metal off a lot easier than our files would.
Suffice to say that after a lot of measuring with callipers in the suddenly rather murky water we got the dimensions for the key and now have a working propeller and so are now able to motor again and all for a fraction of the cost we had envisaged at one point when we thought we would be needing a new prop and possibly shaft!
The battery saga continues though we have a couple of places where we can try. That won't be cheap and we are braced for spending three to four hundred Euros.
No comments:
Post a Comment