Well, so now the keel is out. Quickly we have to realize that we cannot glue that keel in by ourselves, at least not with the fast cure material that is available on the island.

Therefore we are happy to get the help from Nicolas and his team and fix the date for Monday afternoon. Unfortunately it rains on Monday morning and as the material should not get wet they postpone for another day -in the afternoon the weather was fine and I was a bit upset to have not yet gotten the job done…

On Tuesday it does start to get more cloudy in the afternoon but preparation works start, the travel lift picks us up once again,

the guys start to put the material on, when Nicolas shouts to them “guys, you have 10 more minutes” and points out to us that a squall is around the corner.

The guys speed up, move the keel underneath She San to be more protected, Reto and I pick up a big strong plastic foil when the sand already comes flying horizontally and the heavy rain starts to pour down. We both peek around the corner of the foil and listen to Nicolas’ orders “down, up,  push forward, down again” and then we almost can feel the “plopp”, the keel is in position…

We are very relieved and happy that this worked out all right even with the squall just coming in the most inconvenient moment.

 

 

 

 

 

Then Reto takes use of the time and has a look at the condition of the saildrives as this is a yearly maintenance point. The saildrives transmit the power ofthe engine to the propellers with the help of a cone clutch and an angular gear. After taking out the starbord one with the help of the local mechanic they go to the workshop and inspect.

When Reto comes back with tears in his eyes I know that something is not good. The most apparent thing found was a ball bearing loosing one ball and a piece of the fixation for the balls (after draining the gear oil they found the pieces in the case below afterwards), but having a closer look at everything, even the lower parts show quite some play.

In order to be able to judge better by ourselves, Reto disassembled the other side as well, and although the condition is slightly better, it also shows quite some wear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now we stand between the decision to have a complete revision of all wear parts or if we invest in two new saildrives.. Great, an investment like that equal a nice small car, we really didn’t anticipate…

Well, when you have read until here, you might understand why we have just recently included a “PayPal Donation Button”. Maybe you do like our blog and want to support us a little bit?

Whatever comes out, we will stay quite a bit longer in the boatyard, and the daily fight with the hords of mosquitos continues…