It has been another big week.

A major milestone achieved has been the replacement of the propeller shaft thrust bearing. The shaft now spins whisper quiet, a far cry from the noisy rumblings that used to emanate from it. While we had the shaft connector off (joining the prop shaft to the intermediate shaft), I decided it would be crazy not to replace the agricultural dog-clutch style connector with a new modern flexible coupling. This part of the refit is proving a rather expensive exercise but I am confident that it will be well worth it once Sylph is back in the water and, with luck, having the engine’s drive train run much quieter. (A photo of a bearing doesn’t strike me as particularly exciting and an audio file of a silently spinning prop shaft seems a little silly as well.)

A little further aft, the new tiller post is coming along and hopefully will be completed late next week. I have painted out the area inside the hull around the rudder head which was previously inaccessible due to the huge sprocket that used to sit there and I am looking forward to being able to tick this refit project off on my GANTT chart very soon. (It’s raining today and the back of the cockpit is closed up so no progress photo this week.)

And another major achievement has been stripping out the furniture on the port side and the removal of the port water tank. This has revealed sections of the hull, particularly behind the long-ago decommissioned fridge, that have not seen the light of day for some forty years. Perhaps it will come as no surprise that there has been significant corrosion over that time. When I eventually repair all the damage and reinstall the furniture I will make sure that it is all relatively easy to remove so that when I want to paint the hull again it won’t require destroying the boat’s interior.

The port side of the hull laid bare after some forty years:

All is well.