Two huge areas of progress

Today started much wetter than forecast, last night was also much windier than forecast. We are now expecting over 20 hours of heavy rain and some northerly wind.

Wheelhouse Enclosure

So Jane has been working hard on the wheelhouse enclosure. We now have the two back pieces finished, fitted and zipped together:

We are very excited to see how these work.

Propeller shaft alignment

We have spent a couple of days working together towards getting the propeller shaft connected to the Aquadrive unit. This transmits the thrust from propeller onto the boat, so a big beefy bearing gets bolted to the thrust bulkhead we have created. Then this has a universal joint piece to connect to the motor so that the motor does not have to be perfectly aligned (and can be mounted on vibration reducing flexible mounts).

Getting the alignment right has been worrying me for 3 years. However, we sorted some jigs and a way of using a feeler gauge to get the boltholes for the Aquadrive unit perfectly aligned. We then used the jigs to create a 104mm hole in the thrust bulkhead for the Aquadrive unit itself. That needed to be widened slightly to avoid any vibration touching and for the wider propeller shaft clamp to it.

Now it is done and fitted!!!!!

We do still need to fit the dripless seal (to stop water following up the propeller shaft and sinking us) and water cooling for it. We also need to replace the current galley drain with a seacock for the salt water intake.

Now we can build on top of the bulkhead. We need to mount the Electric Motor controller (and all the cooling system) and an enclosure for all the wiring.

Later all the area with the propeller shaft and black seacocks (cockpit drains plus a salt water intake for potential deck wash, watermaker and washing up water) will be enclosed by a coffer dam. The thrust bulkhead will be the forward end of that.

We are so pleased with both these jobs. Both really critical items from the jobs list.