Edgar wrote:
"Capt. JG" wrote in message
...
I think the next project will be to see what's up with the stuffing
box...
seems like too much water comes in... more than a slow drip... when the
prop
shaft is moving. I may move to a dripless, but perhaps I can just tighten
it
a bit. According to the manual, the stuffing material can't be replaced
with
the boat in the water. This is an odd statement, since I've seen it done
on
other boats. I'm going to give them a call if I need to go that far.

There are usually about three turns of packing in the gland. The secret of
repacking while afloat is to leave one of the turns in place and replace the
first two that you come to. Don't disturb the first turn at all or you may
make it loose. Some water will come in while you carry out the work but the
one packing turn will keep this to a reasonable level to enable you to fit
two new turns of packing and clamp up.
The packing material is square in section. make sure you get some of the
correct size (subtract shaft diameter from sterntube diameter) and then
before you start dismantling anything wrap the packing around the visible
part of the shaft and with a sharp blade cut several rings so that the ends
butt nicely together when fitted snugly onto the shaft. Offset the two butt
joints 180 degrees.
Get everything ready before you start. You will need some sharp pointy tool
to hook out the old packing. I misuse an engineers scriber or this sort of
thing sometimes because it has very sharp points and one of them is turned
at a right angle so is easy to get into awkward places.


Perhaps the amount of flow varies from boat to boat. I have a Catalina
30 and I have changed the packing in the water with no problem at all.
Even removing all of the packing the flow is not excessive and the bilge
pump keeps up with it easily. But again, maybe this is different on some
other boats.

I have found that having a couple of dental picks with different points
(i.e., curved and straight) works pretty well for removing the old
packing. I picked a few up at a military surplus store near me for real
cheap. Maybe you could ask your dentist if he is tossing some old ones
for some reason.

One other thing: I really like the Gore-Tex synthetic packing. It can
work in a standard stuffing box but is very durable.

--Alan Gomes