Yesterday was the big day, the day I had been dreading; the day I was going to at least attempt to remove the prop shaft and cutlass bearing from Stap Isi. And as it turned out it was just about the easiest repair I had ever made on the boat.
What caused my dread was the vision I had of couplings, bearings, and fittings, all sitting in and around salt water, corroding and fusing and generally becoming one with each other. And then after five years, ten years, who knows how many years of such bonding, here I come with a mallet to take it all apart again. All I could envision was me wailing away at various fittings while they cracked, shattered, deformed, and otherwise became completely unusable.
So with fear and trembling I arrived at Stap Isi at 7 AM on Friday, utterly prepared for the worst. First order of business was to remove the front coupling from the drive shaft that connects the shaft to the transmission. I remembered how difficult it was to pound the coupling on in the first place back in 2004. Reversing the process was not going to be a picnic. But nothing ventured … I picked up the mallet and gave the coupling a solid rap. What was that? Did it actually move? I rapped it again – it definitely moved that time. About four more raps and the coupling popped off and fell into the swill in the bilge. Ok, I can deal with bilge swill.
Next I removed a bearing from the middle of the shaft. Came right off, and of course dropped into the bilge swill. By now I was getting quite good at de-swilling the parts. I went out to where the shaft emerges from the boat, took hold of it and gently pulled. Out it slid. Part one completed in about 30 minutes.
Now for the hard part. I had to somehow get the cutlass bearing out of the tube in which it was fit. I had read on the internet how various people got their bearings out. Many of them involved constructing a home-made bearing puller out of esoteric parts available at any local hardware store in the states but completely unheard of here. Some DIY boaters described having to carefully cut the bearing out with a hack saw. Oh this was going to be fun.
Returning to the cabin of the boat I ran a long pipe down the tube until I encountered the inner end of the bearing. Then taking up my trusty mallet I gave the pipe a sound rap. Hmmm, that felt like something moved. It could not possibly be this easy. I rapped the pipe several more times and it definitely felt like the bearing was moving. There was a small crowd of Papua New Guineans sitting around under a tree outside, no doubt hoping I would do something very entertaining. I asked them if the bearing was coming out and they responded that it was. Yee Haw. Now I was inspired. About six more solid raps with the mallet and I heard the lovely angelic music of a bearing hitting concrete. The job was done. And the whole thing beginning to end took only about an hour and a half.
This morning I returned to the boat with the new bearing. Being the eternal pessimist I was concerned about how hard it would be to fit the new bearing back in the tube. To tilt the odds a bit I had left the bearing in the freezer all night to shrink it a bit. This morning I filled a cooler with ice and put the bearing in it, went to the boat, cleaned out the tube and put a thin layer of grease in the tube. Then I took the icy cold bearing, said a prayer, and tried to insert it into the tube. It went easily with almost not pressure required, then as the bearing warmed up it expanded and within a few minutes was fitted beautifully in the tube waiting for the return of the prop shaft.
Not all boat repairs go this easily. OK, in reality, no boat repairs go this easily. From now on I think that we are on the downhill slide as far as getting Stap Isi repaired. There is still some epoxy-ing and fairing to do as well as finishing the bottom paint. But I think that we should be able to refloat the boat some time middle of next week.