- Diesels are not at all like their gasoline brethren. A finely tuned gas-fed engine sort of purrs under its breath and hums high-pitched songs of far off places to the road beneath its wheels. A diesel is not so refined. They growl and jitter and the songs they sing are not captured by the ear so much as felt all the way down to the marrow in your bones. Ours has been a little louder than some, idles kinda rough and smoky at first. You can chalk most of that up to sludgy 8 year old fuel but there’s always been something else. A high pitched complaint issuing mainly from the (brand new) intermediate shaft bearing, with a worrisome vibration thrown in for good measure.
By the time we pulled into Morro Bay, the complaint had blossomed into a full-fledged screaming match and that vibration we’d noticed had managed to shear off one of the tranny mounting bolts. Awesome. We already knew the shaft was kind of suspect anyway–it had problems with pitting and corrosion and well, basically had a hard time staying on the straight and narrow, if you know what I mean.
On the hard in Morro Bay
Lucky for us, the Morro Bay Boatyard was able to haul us out. We ordered up a new shaft and then commenced The Waiting. The plan was to have our new shaft delivered to the boatyard, haul out the boat on December 20th, bang out the old shaft and send it and the new shaft to a local machine shop so they could replicate the taper, get the new shaft back to the boatyard, shove it in place and wrap the whole thing up before Christmas. Silly us, when do things ever go according to plan?
SAIA, the company delivering our new shaft pretty much just dropped the ball and sucked. Then they picked the ball back up and recommenced the suckitude. Apparently their genius delivery driver couldn’t find anyone to receive the shaft at the boatyard so he just turned around and went back to Santa Maria and who knows what happened to him after that. Maybe he got abducted by aliens. Maybe he came down with an acute case of how-to-do-my-job amnesia. All we know for sure is that he crept in and out like a black hat delivery guy ninja. Nobody ever knew he’d come and gone because…wait for it…homeboy failed mention it to anybody. No note saying, “Sorry we missed you.” No phone call, no nothing. I don’t even think he mentioned it to his employer.
Now, I’ll grant you that this particular boatyard is a little quirky. The guy who owns the place is a swashbuckling German fellow named Joe who’s partial to American muscle cars, skin tight blue jeans, and buccaneer boots. Dude totally pulls it off. Unfortunately, he can only haul one boat at a time because the yard is about as big as a postage stamp that’s been licked and then stuck to the bottom of a long, steep, curving driveway. It’s got a killer view and multi-million dollar vacation homes sprouting like mushrooms from the rooftops of the workshop and bathroom buildings. Even so, I find it hard to believe that our wayward driver couldn’t find anybody at all to receive our parts.
After Steve gifted the trucking company with several heaping rations of steaming hot shit, they suddenly figured out how to do their job and delivered our brand spanking shiny new shaft. But the damage was done. We lost our slot on the haulout docket and sat stuck, waiting for German Joe to find a couple of days he could squeeze us into.
On the hard again
Once we finally got Landfall up on the hard again, we decided to inspect and pressure wash the bottom, replace zincs, and hopefully figure out why in the heck our speedometer wasn’t working any more. I imagined there might be weensy barnacles nestled on the paddle wheel, or you know random sea muck shoved in and amongst the nooks and crannies–but this??? No, not so much. We scraped it all off, got the little wheel gizmo spinning freely and …still doesn’t work right.
A forest of unwonderfulness colonized our speedo
Fortunately, the new shaft and prop worked out beautifully, although everything sounds weird now without that vibration doing its groove thing in the background.
With the pretty and the shiny
Twitter Updates
Written by tamiko
Topics: Insanity, Pics, Stuff That's Hard, The Boat, The Cruising Life, Work