Message de Bill CARTER.
Salut à tous , voici un petit message de Bill CARTER, je suis pas sure d’avoir bien compris, alors je m’en remet à vous pour un petit coup de traduction…
“I have 259 cipango..wauquier have a curious way of putting the prop shaft through the hull at an angle( great for reversing) but the p bracket is supported by a « sharks fin » in the interior of the hull which after 30 years of vibration leaks out of the top. Unlike you lucky b..ds in the north we med types cannot just lay alongside and dry out so how to fix a leak when afloat.
I made the equivalent of a giant condon out of a motor cycle inner tube and slipped it over the sharks fin and held it with 2 jubilee clips. It works fine and i could now enclose it all in chopped mat paste.
Has anyone else had this problem?“
Merci
Seb
One thought on “Message de Bill CARTER.”
Dear Bill,
I’m another one of those med types having my boat all year long in the water. I’m not sure what you mean with the ‘shark fin’ on the inside of the hull. Can you post a picture? Do you have a dripless rubber stuffing box mounted on your stern tube? This will keep out most water but it should be changed every 4 year.
Your leak is probably due to the stern tube, which is a real danger on the Centurion 32. The original one is made of a PVC like material which becomes brittle over time and can break. A dripless stuffing box is a good idea to prevent a major leak if this happens. Below I copy what Franck Ibanez once told me (his thrilling story of crossing the Atlantic with Winnibelle is somewhere on the internet, in French 🙁
“I am in actual fact talking about the stern tube on which the dry shaft seal is connected. This is a weak point on the Centurion which can lead to catastrophical
consequences. The shaft goes thru the hull via a tube. This tube is made of some PVC type of material which after a number of years is fragilized. The normal
vibrations caused by the rotation of the shaft, even when the engine is correctly aligned, causes this tube to fatigue over the years. When you undertake a voyage
such as mine, there are moments when you run the engine for several days and
nights. This stern tube needs to be replaced with a fiberglass tube. You can check to make sure it is a PVC tube at the present time or wait until the next haul out. Then if the stern tube is a PVC type, you remove the shaft and dry shaft seal then you cut a
slice of the stern tube. This will allow you to collapse the tube a bit and it will come out the hull like a charm because there is no adhesion between this tube and the hull. Then you can insert a new tube (of the correct diameter) made of fiberglass that you will seal with 5200 type sealant. The part of this tube protuding inside the boat in the engine compartment will be glassed on the hull with a serie of roving and
mat and epoxy resin. Do not use polyester resin for the job.
I insist on this point because it is a very dangerous weakness of the fabrication. I was in sheltered waters inside the inner coastal water ways at Cape Hateras when this stern tube simply broke. I would not have lost my life, but I would have lost my boat. If this had happenned at sea, in the middle of the night, it would have been a different story with probably a dramatic ending. When the PVC stern tube breaks, it
opens up a large hole allowing big quantities of water to rush in very fast. I was able to save the boat by diving and stuffing plastic bags from outside.”
Tom.
Centurion 32 #320 “Iris”
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