Fixing the wet cockpit sole (Patreon)

Hi guys!

In this week's video, Julian and I fix a very annoying design flaw that I have seen on multiple fountaine pajot catamarans - a wet cockpit floor when it rains. I devised a good fix for an exposed breaker (a bent acrylic shield), and Ava toured the Hunley submarine right next to the yard. 

In real-time news. We opened up both Volvo 130S saildrives this week to replace the shaft seals. One saildrive was perfect. The other one, not so much. The nut had come loose on the vertical shaft and had been nicely dommed by the horizontal shaft. This could have gone sideways really fast as soon as the nut would have worn down enough to slip off the vertical shaft! A new nut cost $22 - for a freaking nut. The big problem is that the threads on the vertical shaft are damaged. We're trying to see if we can clean them up enough that we can get the new nut on there but there might not be enough thread left. A new vertical shaft is $350 but ... oh and there is a nice 'but' here ... it requires specialized tools for a little over $4000 to replace. Some of those I'm sure we could improvise but yikes ;)

We talked and sent photos to a local mechanic that, in a matter of seconds, proclaimed, "You needed a new saildrive, sir". That is an utterly ridiculous statement. Looking at the workshop manual, replacing the vertical shaft is pretty straightforward. After asking the mechanic a couple of times, he offered up that he had never done a shaft replacement, that he didn't know how to, that he didn't want the liability, and that "it wasn't how it was done". Fair enough, but why not start by saying that instead of going straight to a $12,000 (not including $4,000 to 6,000 in labor) new saildrive? Mind you, he never suggested the $6,000 option of just replacing the lower unit. There is NOTHING wrong with the upper unit, and replacing the lower unit once the drive is out is child's play. In regard to his estimated cost of $4,000 to $6,000 in labor to install a brand new saildrive. Having never done it before aboard Athena, it took me around a day. The mechanic estimated it to be around 6 hours for two people. I think 6 hours is a reasonable estimate, BUT That means each of those two guys is billing between $333 and $500 per freaking hour. Holy smokes! I was so annoyed at this guy that I didn't fall asleep until 3:00 this morning. 

We're trying to see if we can clean up the threads on the vertical shaft, but I don't think there is time enough for the parts and tools to arrive from Sweden before I need to leave. Julian doesn't feel confident in doing the shaft replacement or the lower unit replacement on his own. If anyone knows of a mechanic in the Charleston area who can help, I'd love to get some contact information.