A propulsion worry becomes irrelevant

The last item on the pre-launch list was finished last week. The VHF antenna is now mounted on the roof and is connected to the transceiver which is now mounted over the steering position. So I did one last walk-around inspection, with happy thoughts of being back on the water dancing through my mind.

Then I saw too much of the cutless bearing. This is not good. This brass and rubber prop shaft fitting is supposed to be mostly out of sight, housed in a bearing carrier at the aft end of the propeller shaft tube. Ms Bettencourt's cutless bearing had migrated aft toward the prop hub and is almost jammed against a shaft zinc. My happy thoughts about being on the water began to dispel.

Oh, well. Back to my first law of old machinery maintenance: When in doubt, disassemble. In case you don't know what a cutless bearing is, by the way, here's a picture of one:

Not all Albin-25s have cutless bearings. The boats came from the factory in Sweden with a slotted bakelite sleeve fixed in a fitting at the water end of the propeller shaft. The slots were supposed to admit water to the shaft tube which was to travel up the tube to cool the shaft support at the aft end of the engine. This arrangement worked well until, in my case, the bakelite sleeve broke up and disappeared into the deeps. There was a great racket as the shaft end slapped around. Something had to be done. By then, cutless bearings had been invented and the rest is history.

Meanwhile, back at the Port Authority, I am on the job disassembling at 0750 Saturday. The propeller must come off in order to reach the cutless bearing carrier. Step-1 in this process is to remove the steering tiller arm from the rudder shaft. Piece of cake. I keep marching through Dixie-- remove the skeg bracket that holds the rudder end. No problem. The rudder slides down and out nicely. Next, remove the prop shaft nuts and set the propeller puller device. No problem. Carefully tighten the propeller puller and--miraculously-- the prop jumps off into my arms with a satisfying "whang!"

All of this has taken about two hours. Finally, I arrive at the bearing carrier. Here's what it looks like:

That's it to the left of the shaft zinc. This picture was taken before I got the prop off. It is a little blurry because sweat was running into my eyes while I was trying to focus.





With the prop and zinc removed, the carrier and the cutless bearing slide off easily as a unit. I find that a fat rubber gizmo holding the bearing carrier has apparently loosened its grip, allowing the bearing and carrier to migrate aft. Or maybe I didn't tighten this enough the last time I had it out. I push it all back together the way it supposed to be and tighten the bejezzus out of everything.

Ninety minutes later, I have the zinc and prop back on the shaft, prop nuts torqued down, cotter key in, rudder, skeg bracket and tiller re-installed. Ms. Bettencourt is  launch ready. A plan is made to put her in the river today.

"Man plans and God laughs"  is one of my favorite aphorisms. In this case, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the water level in the Savannah River,  must have been laughing too. We got to the boat ramp and there wasn't enough water in the river to float Ms Bettencourt off the trailer. With the truck and trailer down the ramp as far as safely possible and Ms. Bettencourt throbbing full power astern-- nothing happened.

So the launch was aborted and we're back under the shed.

But the cutless bearing carrier did its job under great stress, so I guess that's one thing positive to be said today about progress to date toward Ms. Bettencourt's next cruise.