Fw: On the Hard

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sat 20 Jun 2015 23:00


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From: "John & Jane Craven" <seaduced {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 11:28 AM
To: "Seaduced Blog" <seaduced+diary-620862 {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com>
Subject: On the Hard 21:06.342 S 149:13.777 E

The blog from now will not normally contain pictures as I am posting via the satellite phone.

When we returned to Mackay on Saturday evening, we had a frustrating few days trying to work out what the problem was. Tim, the guy from Nauticare who had done the majority of maintenance work on Seaduced whilst we were away from the boat, including fitting replacement rudder bearings, turned up at 07.00 on Sunday morning.

After an hour working on the rudder from inside the aft cabin, and much head scratching from Tim, Paul and I, rather than dismantle any more of the rudder and it's component parts, as we were already at the level of the waterline and if we took off the next seal we would get very wet, we decided to haul out on Monday morning.

To cut a long story short, the replacement rudder bearing should have had 24 * 10mm spindles and 3 * 8mm spindles, whereas ours had 25 * 10mm and 2 * 8mm, which meant that the spindles couldn't move and the bearing had seized.

By Wednesday evening, we managed to repair the bearing and get the necessary replacement parts to replace those that had been damaged when the bearing seized.

We have been living on board whilst propped upon the hard for the past 3 nights so are looking forward to getting back in the water. We are hoping to relaunch tomorrow morning, go for a test sail to check the repairs and, if all goes well, will just carry on towards Darwin - Fingers crossed!!