Sunday and Monday 12/3-4/17: After a flurry of phone calls and waiting for return messages Friday- Sunday a plan started taking place. Wilmington Iron works had 6 ft super strength steel rod they could mill to match our needs and S&W Diesel located a transmission plate in Seattle and arranged to fly it down to LA overnight. Al delivered the broken parts to both and gathered other parts but I can't name all of them, couplers and packing glands and bushings? If the transmission plate was delivered to S&W by 8:00 Tues. they said they could have it done by 10:00. Everything was falling into place. Now to line up new as Tom and Rain had work commitments. When Rob Wallace heard of ChezNous's breakdown he offered to help and he let us know he was available. Jim and Bob were still in. So Bob got a return plane ticket, this time to San Diego, having faith that we would be there with parts in hand (well, in Van) to pick him up.
Tuesday 12/05/17: The transmission backing plate arrived before 8:00 at S&W and the machinists were patiently making the modifications when we arrived.
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| Old Plate |
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| New Plate being Modified |
Picked up the new shaft at Wilmington Iron by 10:15 and headed for Belmont Shore to pick up Jim, then Laguna Niguel to pick up Rob at a carwash and on to San Diego airport baggage claim to pick up Bob. After a quick stop for Mx car insurance at San Ysidro and then visas for the crew at the border we finally arrive at the yard in Ensenada before 3pm without a glitch.
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| Al, Bob, Rob, Jim |
Now Al's work really begins. Putty Humpty Dumpty back together again is a task. The yard workers helped with the outside shaft and propeller but Al is the bilge mechanic. This time he had lots of helpers.
We got Al out of the bilge for a short break around 4:30 for carryout fish tacos, as no one had lunch.
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Al trying to get the coupler on the shaft, Jim standing by...
ready to hand him another tool. |
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| Three professional Captains plus Chez Nous's owner engineer mechanic captain |
Three hours later and a lot of hard work the transmission and shaft were installed and tools put away. The yard was locked up for the night with us inside so cocktails and nuts for dinner..
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