Moments of Sheer Terror

Boating consists of hour upon hour of complete boredom, interspersed with moments of sheer terror.  Sue had her moments of terror (again) on this past Monday as she lost power on the port engine just as she was trying to dock the boat.

We had a very nice start to the day, still at anchor in a beautiful bay next to a state park.  We departed late in the morning for the short ride to Sister Bay marina on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula.  As Sue enters the marina & starts to make a 90-degree pivot into our slip, the port engine or transmission or prop or something quit working & she started to lose control.  Fortunately, her coaxing of the starboard engine, along with a favorable wind, led us to land against the face of another dock without hitting any other boats.  Yes, our voices rose an octave or two, and we had all of our hours of complete boredom erased in mere moments.

Sue is actually getting pretty good handling these emergencies, since this is the second time the port engine quit on her as she is approaching the dock.  The first time was 3 seasons ago in Panama City FL when the engine fuel pump failed & the engine became strangely silent.

The definition of a "bad day" is having TowBoatUS
tie to your port side!

So the next day, we make that fateful phone call to TowBoatUS, to come tow us to a marina about a mile away where we can be hauled out to find what the hell happened.  As the boat comes out of the water, we see that the port prop is still there on the shaft, but the shaft has moved aft about 4-5 inches.  Sure looks like a sheared prop shaft to me!

 

 

 

The port shaft (on the left) has moved aft 4-5"
compared to the other prop

The freshly cut part of the shaft (left) is compared to
the failed section of the shaft (right).  The dirt and
corrosion on the failed section indicates it had
previously had a partial failure.

On Wednesday we haul the boat again to begin removing the broken shaft.  Because of the location of the failure (inside the packing box), and other restraints (there ain’t nothing in boating that is easy), the 2” stainless steel prop shaft had to be cut into 4 pieces to be removed out of the boat.  Upon inspecting the location of the shear, it seemed that the shaft had developed a crack or partial failure some time ago, possibly years ago.  And it just decided to completely fail at this place at this time.  In retrospect, we think it had been ready to fail for quite some time (like when we’re inside the Welland Canal, or during one of our rare full-power runs).  At least it failed at low engine rpm, and seems to have caused no collateral damage, except to my wallet.

So tomorrow, we’re borrowing the yard’s truck to take the pieces and parts down to Manitowoc WI to get a new shaft made, to the tune of $3400.  It will take about a week before the new one is ready.  We had previously planned to spend about 4 days in Sister Bay, so now we’ll get our wish, and then some.  I guess that if you had to break down somewhere, Door County WI is much better than in the middle of Lake Michigan!