A Little Road Trip
October 22, 2011

Given that it was over three months since we last boarded Why Knot and winter is coming on, we thought it best to go see how she is doing. That’s where the “we” ended and the “I” took over. Bear could not go and had to stay home and do the healing thing. I headed over to Wilmington last Sunday way before sunrise with the idea to winterize WK and get back today. It is a short 1,400 mile jaunt each way so one automatically deducts four days from the time on the target.

It turned out that the yard, Gregory Poole Company, was ahead of the curve. It was late Monday night when I arrived at the Wilmington Marine Center to find WK already prepped to receive her new bottom paint. Even the raised water line marks were already there. I spoke with the yard guys who mentioned that they planned to apply the paint on Tuesday because Wednesday and Thursday was to be rain days.

I got to the yard at 0700 on Tuesday to find the paint guru was already working. He would actually finish the job that day. Launch was scheduled for Wednesday rain or shine. That meant I had to install her new prop after hours on Tuesday and before dark. Did I mention that the prop comes in 12 pieces plus screws? I already knew how to assemble it since that is what I have done for entertainment whilst back in the Hill Country (it’s a guy thing).

Painting done, it was my turn. I whipped out an old lawn chair and careful not to touch the wet bottom paint (always wishful thinking) I removed the old prop. It had done a fine job assisting us in our Caribbean cruise and a great deal of the ICW. Back it to the spares locker it went. Here is where the reminder that half hour jobs never, but never take that long came into focus. The prop is a work of engineering close tolerances. Either the parts fit or they don’t and a big hammer will not help. First came the hub part where the shaft key must be fitted to the new keyway depth. That means that the old prop had a different groove than the new one. That meant that I was in for a long exercise with a file. OK, I built in some time in the schedule for “unforeseen” delays. It is a trial and error thing and after a few minutes filing, you check to see if everything fits properly. The first thirty or so times it did not. Finally, it did. Now for some fun. But wait, the nut that holds the prop on the shaft screwed too far down on the shaft. The manual says that no more than one thread should show so as to allow proper operation during the feathering program. Dang! The manual also said to cut off the excess threads. Now four and a half very expensive years in engineering university taught me little other than the fact that a hack saw is a very slow way to cut stainless steel, yup stainless steel. That is why I counted them. It took 347 strokes to cut the shaft. Now, I thought all the obstacles were out of the way. Not!

The next step was to assemble the prop on the hub. The manual said to fill the inside of the gizmo with the special grease that came with the prop. In all my years messing with petroleum products, I have never seen anything slicker. We won’t mention owl products on door knobs. I filled the parts and staged them so that in one motion faster than a speeding locomotive, the assembly would be made. Now the trick, and there is always a trick, was to hold three blades with a spacer so that the gear on each blade would slide into the hub housing. Did I mention close precision? Did I mention gravity? Did I mention muddy ground at the worksite? So, the idea is to hold 14 pounds of parts, all loosely targeted at precise grooves while in the feathered orientation and hitting said grooves in the right order with one hand. The other hand was to hold the rotating hub so that two tiny marks on the castings stayed in the right orientation and squishing said assembly into the heavily greased housing. Three minutes into attempting to line all that up and I dropped two blades, now heavily greased, into the mud. Thinks I: “doggonit”. Forty five minutes later, smelling like acetone and with a slightly woozy feeling from the vapors, I made another attempt. This time only one blade hit the mud. Thinks I, there must be better way, here in the dark to do this. That’s when it hit me. Put the end cap on a dock box and assemble the blades in the hub. That way, nothing moves relative. It worked and after three hours of thinking positive thoughts and wishing universal peace on everyone, I was done.

Next morning at 0730, Why Knot slid nicely into the water without incident. Back at the slip, I removed stuff like canned goods that might freeze before we returned. It is a good thing because of the ships stores, many cans were out of date. One dated back three years. The rest came back to operation central with me. I wonder how long an off brand of chopped pineapple chunks can go without reaching critical mass? The bottom line is that Why Knot is now ready for hibernation. The trip home was an exercise in snacking and scratching. Yesterday was a nine hundred mile drive. It would have been most tolerable had Bear been in the right seat.