This morning I tackled the gremlin that’s been taunting me in the engine compartment since we arrived. The problem remains the shaft coupler. I’ve been calling it a tranny coupler, but have since been corrected. The problem has been that when I back down hard in reverse the shaft is slipping out of the coupler. Once it slips past the pin that holds the coupler and shaft together it simply stops spinning, and we cannot move. We’re fortunate in that it only happens when backing down hard because the only time we do that is when we are setting the anchor, which means we are in a relatively safe environment.
Anyway, I thought about it some more and figured that the bolt that goes through the coupler into the shaft was the culprit. It wasn’t being set into the shaft far enough, or the bolt was simply backing itself out because I didn’t have any Loctite on it.
The problem this morning is that once I had everything apart and then back together again I couldn’t get the shaft to move forward. It needed to move a good four inches forward, and yesterday I was under the boat hitting it with my biggest hammer to no avail.
I knew I could secure it badly and maybe limp into Barra de Navidad where I could repair it a little more properly, but wasn’t too keen on that idea. What I couldn’t figure how I was going to get that drive shaft to move. Then it hit me, I could just loosen all the shaft bolts, start the engine, and put it in drive. This solution scared me a bit because I knew the key (what I’ve been calling the pin) wasn’t seated all the way in, and if that were to get twisted up we’d be screwed. But it seemed like the logical solution, so this morning I fired her up, put the engine in forward, ever so slowly, and watched excitedly as the shaft inched its way forward. When it stopped moving I shut the engine down, drilled a nice deep hole in the shaft through the bolt hole, tightened that bolt down good, and called it a success. If it holds I’m a genius. If not I just go back to being a moron, no big deal.
Sitting in the cockpit this afternoon Ali spotted a huge breaking wave about a half mile away at the entrance to the bay. We watched for it a second time and instead watched as a whale exploded through the surface of the water, arched, twisted, and splashed down. Seconds later her baby tried to do it too. This is the kind of thing we can expect to see fairly regularly at sea here in Mexico, but to watch it while swinging at anchor is pretty amazing. Ouest and I waited a few minutes and then hopped in the dinghy to go have a look. We got out there just in time to watch them breach one last time and then they were gone.
