…. and that’s the good news.
The bad news is I got the bill for the yard work in, and it was 3x as much as I thought and 2x as much as my ‘worst case’ estimate. It was over the initial amount that I thought I was going to have to pay by a factor of 10.
This is why you always get a quote and never be like ‘can you do this’, for the record. If I’d known it was going to be even close to this much I’d have just left the stuffing box on and carried on for another season. The worst part is that I don’t even have anything shiny and new, just stuff that works the same as the old stuff pretty much.
The plus side is that I have a brand new prop, coupling and shaft and the coupling comes off easily now, plus I have the old prop as a spare.
The minus side is that my budget is completely and utterly shot, which meant the battery upgrade, solar panel and windless will have to wait until next year. Boooo. I’m even in two minds now whether to pull the mast, which was my main reason for hauling out!
Lessons learned from this:
– Try to do as much as possible yourself. I knew this already, but figured replacing the stuffing box with a PSS would be a couple hours work which I was happy to pay in order to get out the yard asap. It ended up being over 20 hours.
– After I was informed they would have to cut the shaft, I should have paused and asked for a quote. At the very least I should have shopped around.
Now, in fairness I was in a hurry to get back in the water and to my home marina, and I spent the first part of this month in a lot of distress due to other things going on my life, so I could not be as diligent as I usually am. But still. Expensive lesson, sigh.
