Finally got on the water

[ForeverDes]

Hello all,
In mid-July, after what seemed like a long struggle with the BMV, I finally received all the paperwork I needed and was able to launch the New Horizons 26 I purchased back in May. The marina where I had leased a mooring had opened up in late May, and transferring my lease to the new boat was quick, easy, and done at no cost.
I've had a few troubles, but nothing terrible, and overall I am ecstatic to have half a season to enjoy boating.
With the help of my dad and my 15 year old son, we had very little trouble raising the mast with the home-made hoist and setting it in place. It only took about two and a half hours to launch.
When I came back after leaving the boat for about 6 days, both the house and start batteries were dead. It's my fault, considering I didn't switch of the battery selector.
A jump pack got the engine up and running fine, but I learned very quickly the 1960's era generator and external regulator don't output much in the way of amps. I motored for a few hours to put some charge into the starting battery, but it wasn't enough to start the engine the next day. A few more hours motoring on Saturday put a decent charge into the battery, and I thought I was in good shape. For a few minutes at least.
I anchored and made some supper, and then went swimming. After a few minutes I heard the bilge pump come on. I didn't think much about it, until I heard it start pumping again after only a few moments.
I scrambled up into the boat and started checking everything. All the thru hulls were fine, and nothing easily viewable seemed to be the issue. I started pulling the cabinetry to access the engine space, and immediately heard the leak. I got everything out of the way and shined my flashlight into the space to see water coming in at a very steady pace through the propeller shaft itself. And, I quickly noticed the shaft had pulled free from the transmission!
So, it's fairly late on a Saturday night, my batteries are in poor shape, my boat is taking on water, and I had no thrust. Because I have no cover at the moment, and I don’t like leaving the sails out in the sun, I couldn’t sail back to a dock, and the wind was practically non-existent by then anyway.
I wormed my way into a quarter berth where I could just barely reach the shaft with a pair of pliers. I pulled the shaft forward, and the leak stopped immediately! Apparently the shaft has a flexible coupling (that might not be the correct term, but that’s the best thing I know to call it) and it had slipped backwards enough to allow water to run through the keyway on the end of the shaft. I shudder to think of what it would have taken had the shaft slipped back far enough I couldn’t grip it.
I had stopped the leak, but I couldn’t do much else because the engine was still pretty hot from motoring for so long, so I decided to stay anchored and tackle the uncoupled shaft in the morning. I tried googling to find if others had the same issue I had, but I had fairly poor signal and the search was fruitless.
In the morning I was able to look at everything from a different angle, and I immediately saw the hub where the shaft coupled had just a single set screw, and the key was missing. I have no idea if the key popped out when the shaft backed out of the hub, or if it had been discarded by a previous owner. Either way, I didn’t have the means where I was to replace it. Instead I popped the shaft back into the hub, which was surprisingly easy once I got it aligned properly, and then used the set screw in the shaft keyway. I only had a few minutes, maybe 20, of motoring to rach my mooring ball, so I felt it was worth the attempt.
It worked too, and I got the boat properly moored and put away until I was able to get back to it later in the week.
The next day, armed with what turned out to be the wrong size key, but also armed with some googled info, I popped the 3 screws holding the hub to the transmission and took it home to clean it up and get the proper sized key.
On Tuesday afternoon, I went back to the boat propared, and reset the shaft and key into the hub, and bolted the hub to the transmission.
It was a success...until I reversed to kill some speed as I approached my mooring ball again. After “fixing” the engine I pulled up the the wall so I could pop a couple solar panels on the pushpit. I temporarily some wire through the companionway until I could get the right sized wire and a cable gland for it.
Well, long story short (sort of) the shaft popped back out as I tried to kill some speed approaching the ball again. I wasn’t able to grab the mooring line as I passed;the wind was pushing pretty us good and directly at 2 other moored boats. Leaving my son on deck to fend us off other boats as best he could, I rushed below and was able to quickly reseat the shaft and gain some forward thrust.
We avoided hitting any boats, and eased slowly back to the mooring balled and got tied off. My son was a little freaked out by the responsibility of keeping a 3 ton boat from careening off other moored boats using a boak hook and/or kayak paddle, but he recovered quickly.
Two days later I took a ¼”x2.5” bolt and lock nut with me and drilled the hub and shaft. That finally worked a treat, and I can reverse again without issues. Drilling was easy but awkward, and I figured if it didn’t work I could get another hub from Moyer Marine and tackle it another way.
I don’t know why the shaft discoupled to begin with, but I had backed down fairly hard on my anchor so I’ll assume that was it. It took looking through quite a few pages of Google results, but I had found others with the same problem. The general consensus was to drill and tap for a second set screw, and to “dimple” the shaft with a drill so the set screw wouldn’t just scrape the shaft on it’s way out.
I had no troubles this weekend, reverse works again, and other than checking the hub/shaft bolt on a regular basis, I’m going to assume I’ve fixed the issue.
I was able to complete my solar install on Friday. I now have 380 rated watts of solar going through a 60 amp mppt controller. The best I saw over the weekend was just under 5 amps of charging, or well over 200 watts.
I’ve still got a list of upgrades the size of my arm to complete, but after the last week and a half, I’m more grateful than ever that I get a chance this year to really see what I need and plan winter projects.