Dripping, or not - a total joy

On one of our little jaunts, we found that the wing engine stuffing box was getting too warm. The lack of activity during lockown clearly did not agree with it as it was refusing to drip gently. For the non boaters, the stuffing box is an old low technology thing that stops water pouring into the boat from where the propeller shaft is fitted. It has packing material in it that almost seals against the shaft, allowing just a little water through to keep things cool. Or in our case, it didn't.

Now, if this had been our main engine, the job would have been simple. Here is the main engine stuffing box:

with the staining from the wearing packing and muddy brown Bristol Channel beneath it.

You remove the nuts holding the follower in place, slide it forward, dig out the old three rings of packing using a neat screw in tool that lets you drag them out with some brute force, then fit three pre-cut new ones in place. Refit the follower, adjust after a run to get the right number of "drips per second" and all is well.

Only the wing engine has a V drive arrangement where the shaft runs back under the engine itself and the stuffing box is pretty well hidden under there too:

Getting to the nuts on the inboard side of the thing is mission almost impossible. You can't get down that side of the engine, you can't even see them so you need an arrangement like this:

with loads of extension pieces and a very deep 19mm socket. That just reaches the nuts  and lets you work underneath the gearbox to release them. Here is the view looking aft from the gearbox that a phone camera can get - not as easy for humans:

Once all the nuts are off, you try to push the follower up the shaft for access. Oh no, after just more than the thickness of a piece of new packing, it hits the sump of the engine above:

Now you really have fun. The screw in thingy cannot get a good angle as there is so little space. You end up using it, right angled picks, bad language and anything else to hand to dig out the old packing. The third ring, buried deep in the fitting is particularly amusing. Eventually, this is the result:

Some old slightly chewed up packing.

The new rings were fitted in place, nuts replaced by feel and a quick bay trip to test it all out followed:

Luckily it dripped nicely, stayed cool enough and so the wing engine is now ready for service if, heaven forbid, we need it in anger sometime. A little readjustment when we got back and we are good to go.

On the topic of dripping, the tap fitted to the aft cockpit sink was horribly corroded (chrome thing in nice salt air) and was dripping into the locker below when used. It did look rather sad:

So, we procured a rather nice stainless steel replacement which our boat neighbour Russel (a gas fitter who has all the kit) said he would fit for us together with new isolating valves  (the originals had a stupid plastic screw setup and the chases of the screws were already trashed)

and better pipework. New valves took 2 minutes thanks to pushfit pipes. The tap was trickier as the new one hand a much larger collar on the nut that secures it under the worktop - too big as it fouled the side of the cabinet. Nothing is ever simple it seems. So, a large washer was ordered as a base for the tap in preparation for moving the hole around 15 mm inwards. That tap might need to wait for the winter to be fitted.....