Have you ever had that feeling of the carpet being pulled out from underneath you?
That feeling of suddenly falling when everything seemed so stable?
Well, I’ll begin with the fact that this is a hard post to write especially as we have not even started our adventure yet!
With only 3 weeks to go before we leave this current life behind and catch our one-way ticket to Grenada, we get this email from the boatyard in Grenada.
Hi Mike.
We took the lower units of your saildrives apart today and found both to be in very poor condition. The port side has a tooth broken off the gear; both shafts are badly worn and all bearings and races are badly worn, please see attached photos. As you are probably aware, these drives are not easy to rebuild at all. Some parts are no longer available and those that are have become very expensive and Yanmar are actively encouraging their customers to upgrade to the much more reliable SD 60s.
I’m sorry if I am spoiling your weekend.
After some discussion with the Chief Mechanical Engineer, we get the estimate to replace the two drives…
…US$15,000
…F#*K!
The roller coaster of emotions that has gone between Andrea and I over the past few days has been pretty overwhelming. We just felt like everything was finally coming together and coming to terms the financial challenges that lay ahead only to have a massive rock dropped into our calm pond.
So what do you do when you are backed into a corner with only 2 solutions. Either you pony up some serious cash that you don’t have or you quit? What did we do…? Well, we are still not sure of the answer to that.
So let me break down this problem for those that are not familiar with sailboat propulsion.
A sailing vessels primary means of propulsion is obviously the wind. I’ll save the physics of sailing propulsion for another day. As a secondary means of propulsion, the fast majority of sailboats have an engine to drive a propeller.
Most older sailboats have shaft drive engines where the drive shaft goes straight from the engine to the propeller.
More modern sailboats have an engine with a saildrive. This redirects the drive train down through the hull and then redirects again to the propeller. A saildrive also allows the drive train to be much more compact, allowing the engine room to be smaller. This is great for boat designers but not so great for the owner.
The problems arise from the additional gearing and moving parts that create an additional component of the engine that requires routine maintenance and significant wear and tear.
In the case of a catamaran, there are typically 2 engines. One in each hull each with a saildrive attached… caught up…good.
For the machine heads out there, on our boat, we have 2x 54hp Yanmar 4JH4E engines with Yanmar SD50 saildrives. Now as a complete newbie with no knowledge of the laundry list of things to check, I didn’t even think about checking the condition of the oil for the trip down to Grenada for our delivery trip from the British Virgin Islands.
This was a massive oversight on my part as I am not sure when our damage occurred but maybe with a little bit more knowledge and attention to detail, this could have been avoided. When the mechanics in Grenada performed a full service and fluid changes that I requested during our layup they were pretty shocked to find significant damage to the bearings and gear teeth inside the drive.
The oil was jet black and full of metal particulate and the presence of a lot of water meaning the seals had gone as well.
See these pictures for the scope of the damage.
At first I really didn’t see much as I didn’t know what I was looking at but after some research and what these parts are supposed to look like I was pretty shocked.
This video shows what the parts are supposed to look like on an SD60 Saildrive.
Another factor is that I am not sure how many hours these saildrives have on them and typically saildrives will only last 2000-3000 hours before needing a full overhaul. The engines have approximately 3000 hours on them so I am fairly certain now that these drives were due to be replaced anyway.
So where do we go from here?
We could look at used parts or even reclaimed saildrives from hurricane-damaged boats. If you are in the Caribbean I have been told that Harbor Shoppers in St.Thomas, USVI is a great place for used and reclaimed hardware. Now I did find some saildrives on their site for only US$1800 but there is no way to know the condition of them without a significant expenditure in flying there and spending the time to take them apart for inspection before purchasing.
So that leaves us with new.
Yanmar no longer makes the SD50 so parts are a problem anyway. So the next plan is to upgrade to the SD60.
Thats where we stand. New Yanmar SD60 saildrives ordered from Miami, shipped to Grenada, installed by Grenada marine all for the back pocket price of US$15,000.
I guess we better get started with remortaging the house…but thats another story.
