Our Cruising Platform: Great Northern, a DeFever 53 Performance Offshore Cruiser
Scrape, Scrape, Sand and Scrape
A used up rudder zinc. Probably should have been changed out sooner.
Taking a larger look at the issue… there are biological life forms that think a rudder is a fine place to live… until it isn’t.
A new zinc applied to bare metal so it can do it’s zinc thing and via galvanic action… dissolve instead of the underlying stainless steel rudder.
Oh my… this was my favorite. There are two large zincs attached to the transom directly via the studs… to stainless steel metal parts associated with the steering system. This one is shot. The other one was just fine. Both should have been changed out the last time our diver changed out the zincs which we do every 4-5 months. Hmmm…
A new zinc in place. This is what it should look like.
Guck and stuff and growth on the port propeller shaft, shaft strut, and propeller.
Strut scraped / cleaned up for the most part. Propeller nearly done.
Ahhh… better. The golden color is a silicone product called Prop Speed. Barnacles and other growth find it hard to stick to it. When the props spin, they “spin” off the growth until it becomes pitted and no longer effective. This coating is nearing it’s end life, and needs to be replaced with something…
This is the stern thruster propeller. There are two of them that work together in a counter-rotational manner. Very powerful device that assists docking and many other manipulations.
Mo betta with a bit of scraping and sanding. It still has bottom paint on it, but it might need a “recharge”.
Eeek. I was not expecting to see so much growth on the shafts. Divers cannot scrape / clean boats with ablative bottom paint such as ours in Washington State. Hard paints like those used on race boats can be cleaned because it adheres much more tightly to the boat hull. Ablative paint is softer, so when the boat is moving through the water, barnacles and other growth latched onto what they think is a firm surface are “washed away” when the boat moves through the water. Oh yes… little bits of paint go along with them into Davey Jones… But, barnacle growth attached to the running gear can be removed. Thus the surprise… at seeing so much growth on the shafts and props…
After much scraping, sanding, polishing… this is what the shafts look like with new zincs. They are now ready for a coating to ward off future growth…
Thought you’d like to know. Remember now… owning a boat home and cruising about in it… is nothing more that repairing said boat in exotic places. While living in a boat yard while work is being performed on it… in this case having a new bow thruster installed, is nothing more than fixing a boat in an exotic place. Some may think that boatyards are not exotic. But… being surrounded by world cruisers, fish boats, high speed hydrofoil ferry catamarans, and old, decaying boats way beyond their prime, being brought back to life by master craftsmen and women, is a boat junkyard for some. It is a rarefied exotic location for others. I fall into the latter category. Call it a sickness if you will.
Salish Sea Cruising With Blair, Les, Leo, and Bliss 