An "Aquadrive" is a unit that joins an engine to its driveshaft. It acts sort of like a hip joint and allows movement between the two without them having to be perfectly aligned. A thrust bearing (on the right in the above photo) transfers the thrust from the propeller to a structural support. Then, two constant velocity (CV) joints, full of bearings and grease, transfer movement to the engine's gearbox.
A casual conversation, here at the marina, with the mechanic that installed the new engine and gearbox on the boat led to the question: "have you done your CV joints yet"? What? This vastly experienced mechanic warned us not to leave on any long trips without replacing them. After some further research, we learned that these units only have a lifespan of about 3,000 hours. The old engine in this boat had done almost 5,000, so, they were well past their lifespan and needed to be replaced.
That realization led us to a multi-continental, five country, two week search for replacement CV joints. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about makes and models of Aquadrive. Our unit turned out to be a 6070008, an obscure, short-shaft model that was only in production for a short time. Most dealers had never even heard of it. We were offered all kinds of "maybe" solutions to the problem, but, nobody had any parts in stock anyway. It seemed hopeless. Then, I contacted Halyard, the UK Aquadrive distributor. After listening to our problem (refreshing in itself), they referred me to a dealer that they said had a stock of old parts. Well, it seemed most unlikely, but, after contacting Steve at TW Marine, in the most unlikely place for a marine store, the Peaks District in the UK, it only took him five minutes to confirm that he had one, actually more than one, in stock! He said we were the first people to buy one in the 15-20 years they'd been sitting on his shelf. The price was very reasonable and we received the unit in less than a week. It was an easy replacement install, just three hours of installation time and we were done, just a few days before we planned to leave. We heaved a huge sigh of relief.
While waiting for the Aquadrive to get fixed we continued with other items, like checking out the SSB (single sideband radio). Powering it up brought more bad news. The Pactor modem wouldn't self-initialize and we confirmed with a dealer that it is dead and not worth repairing. A new one is at least C$2,000. Maybe we can pick up a used one. We'll leave the decision until later. We're using our Iridium satphone anyway to receive email and weather information at sea.
Next, we started route planning for our upcoming cruise to Australia. Charts, or, rather lack of charts, quickly became another big issue. On the boat, we found very few paper charts, all copies, so old and illegible that we had to throw them out. Luckily, a boat neighbour here in the marina is giving up sailing and sold us about 250 paper charts covering the area of our upcoming cruise. Then, we looked at the electronic charts. I had thought that the chip in the plotter had AU and the Pacific on it as there was an invoice onboard for one. Closer inspection revealed it didn't. There was absolutely nothing for Australia. As our departure date was getting close, this led to a mad rush to try and get electronic charts. Navionics for Australia seemed to be only sold on a regional basis and would be around A$2-3,000 to buy complete, so, we weren't going there. CMAP (whose charts I prefer anyway) had a Continental chip for all of AU/NZ for around A$320. Sounded great, however, we were unable to download the charts online due to residency, billing and payment issues (I should write a post (rant) sometime about how hard international shopping has become), so, had to get a physical chip delivered. In addition, for backup, I still wanted to update our iPad Boating App with the cheaper version of Navionics charts, but, was blocked again due to shopping restrictions. Still don't have a workaround for that obstacle.
Today, as I write this, everything has almost come together. We are only waiting for that final chart chip to be delivered and then we will be off on the next adventure.
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