From the "better late than never" series . . .
Yeah, good luck with that. I've a recommendation; never get diagnosed with cancer on Christmas Eve. Never break your boat the week of Christmas or New Years day. Nobody answers the phone or email. Except your friends, such as Carl and Roxanne on SV Sky Pond.
So we sailed back to Nuka Hiva, Taiohae Bay after the cultural festival. Anchored on the far side of the bay with lots of space. Not moving until I've diagnosed and sorted out a repair for this silly, inoperative starboard propulsion system. First step - is the prop still in place? Check! That's a big one, as a new Gori 16.5" diameter 3-bladed folding prop costs a few grand. Next, remember what happened to Chris French on SV Strikhedonia, a sister Seawind 1160. He had a propulsion system failure arriving at a bay in Mexico - turned out a split pin that is part of the shifter linkage "fell out" and got chewed up by the lower gears in the sail drive. Imagine that being able to happen. Soooooo, use the trusty Westmarine oil sucker to extract as much gear oil as possible (about 1 liter) via the sail drive oil fill port, then dismantle the shifter linkage only to find the split pin in place, snug as a bug in a rug. Wow, now what?
Kevin at Yacht Services Nuku Hiva will gleefully sell high speed internet access for about $6 per 24-hour period. Worth it when times are tough. Get on line with Chris French to discuss, and he tells me that SV Sky Pond had a different sail drive failure involving a defective "torque limiter" being installed at the Yanmar factory. It took several years and hundreds of operating hours for the sail drive to fail. They hauled out near Vancouver, Canada and Yanmar paid most all of the expense to sort it out, also claiming it was an "extremely rare" occurrence. Hmmmmmm.
Next, remove the top cap, bearing and pinion gear from the evil sail drive to inspect the dog clutch assembly. Looks good, but there is a little scoring on the bottom end of the splined shaft where it mates to the "torque limiter". That looks a little odd. Let's have a peek down at that "torque limiter", essentially a fancy spline shaft coupler that connects a lower splined drive shaft with the dog clutch spline shaft. It looks damaged, and there are only perhaps 6mm of splines revealed to couple with the upper part of the drive which is the dog clutch shaft. By now Carl and Roxanne have sent me detailed photos of their haul out and repair, including photos of the "torque limiter". Would you believe we've got exactly the same problem? An improperly assembled torque limiter installed at the Yanmar factory in 2007! Their boat (and propulsion components) are all several years newer than JollyDogs. Anybody think Yanmar may have some chronic quality control problems? Rare as hens teeth, my ass.
Carl provides Yanmar contact information and my emails depart, returning the maddening "we will return to the office on January 6th ". Grrrrrr. Finally, I do receive a response from the Yanmar US marine systems customer support tech rep. We go back and forth, me pushing for Yanmar to pay for an unscheduled haul out, parts and labor to correct the problem. Yanmar noting that we got almost 12 years and over 1700 hours of good service from the sail drive, it's many years out of warranty (unlike Sky Pond) and I'm obviously behind on maintenance because I should have found this problem years ago if I had complied with some utterly ridiculous and expensive procedures (more on that another time). I note that installation of a defective part at the factory amounts to gross negligence and that we had been put at great risk losing control in a crowded anchorage with a hostile lee shore.
To be continued . . .
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