The Moment of Splash

Vero Beach, FL
27 29.77 N 080 22.38 W

Below you see the moment of splash as Tarwathie touches the water once again. Hooray!

From 2010

Here's a few details from the work projects.

Before repair, see the chewed up rubber in the cutlass bearing.

Before repair, with the log removed.

Two of the four shot engine mounts we replaced.

After repair, see how neat, clean, and shiny everything looks.

So what caused the vibration problem we tried to solve? The engine was out of line. The engine mounts were shot. The cutlass bearing was shot. The shaft was bent. The propeller's screws were all partially loose. Which of these were symptoms and which were causes? I'm afraid it will never be entirely clear.

One theory is that it was residual damage caused by getting the dinghy painter wrapped around the propeller last summer. See the blog post Ay Ay Caramba from July 22, 2009.

Another theory is that we bent the shaft when first installing it. See the blog posts from March 2007 The Repowering Project Day 13 and The Repowering Project Day 14. We removed and reinserted the shaft without removing the log. Back then I thought that the modest manual forces applied could never have damaged such a thick shaft. Maybe I was wrong.

I'm afraid that conclusive evidence will never come.