Dear Group, as promised earlier today on the yahoo site here is my dumber than dumb things I did wrong this past weekend! Let me take you back to 2004 first though. During that year we repowered our 41 regal with Cat 3126 420 hp diesels. Performance was outstanding. We were able to keep our original wheels because we lowered the gearing by switching to Twin Disc 507A1 trannies at 1.51/1 instead of the paragon 2.5/1 ratios. Our wheels are/were 23x22 4 blade supposedly Nibral. We had new shafts made (2- MISTAKE #1) and the props were scanned and tuned. All was well. I had an extra 23x22 RH on the shelf but no LH spare (MISTAKE #2). You must be saying to yourself by now why did he skimp on the extra shaft and wheel when he just invested into diesels and paint, its' a fair question. We were pretty sure after running her just a couple of months locally that we would be reshafting to 1-3/4" or perhaps 2" by the next year and since we had been out of the water for 2 years I was ready to get her wet and see how she ran. No plans on any extended cruises for that year. My how time and memories fly on!! 2 years later and a couple of nice 400 mile jaunts we are still running perfectly and I no longer have much thought of re-shafting. Fast forward to Friday on Lake Superior 18 miles north of Madeline Island where we are just about to anchor at Cat Island for some swimming in the 73degree water!!! While running at 2200rpm (24mph) I feel a change in the boats vibrations and before I can reach my son to tell him to shut her down I feel the slight vibration give way to one helluva shaking and than the unforgettable sound of a blade or a wheel slamming into the hull. Back about 10' from the stern the water looks like a bomb just went off! We were lucky as it was but one of 4 blades (2 others were cracked as well)and we were able to still manuever into our dock area with both screws at low speed. Now I am 3 hours away from the marina, I don't have my spare cause it is in the building I store the boat in, I don't have a spare shaft anywhere cause when the diesels were installed I moved the engines as far forward as is possible changing the length. Can anyone say cell phone?? At that point I called everyone in a 200 mile radius and learned the following good lesson. There are no props of 1-1/2" dia. on anyones shelf. I got very lucky and found a boat on the hard that had 1-1/2 shafts and 22x24 wheels. We stole them as the owner was not to be found and the Marina knew he would approve. Do I owe both of these gents!! So bottom line is that when venturing accross open water as we did you/I must be idiots to not have spares on board unless you like leaving your boat behind for a week like I did. The storage will far outweigh the cost of the shaft, and if the weather is bad next weekend I will be into a prop by then! Hope you can smile at my misfortune and not make the same mistakes. My wife made me write this!!! We are still talking though! Mark
