At last Progress

So now that the skeg is permanently affixed to the boat I can move on getting the steering & running gear setup. First up is the rudder.

Mockup rudder shaft slightly off center.

The hole for the rudder shaft is a bit off so I had to enlarge it. See video below.

Mocking up steering gear parts

Just roughly stacked are the components for the rudder. A heafty block of white oak will be glued to the bottom and fixed with a couple layers of carbon fiber & glass. On top of that is the rudder shaft stuffing box. A fairly large plank of white oak will take the place of that small piece of plywood and will hold the pilot bearing, hydraulic ram and rudder position indicator.

Looking down through the rudder shaft hole.

The rudder shaft hole is lined with a piece of fiberglass pipe. Only 4 inches long. I had to get it as true to vertical as possible. Small wedges cut from shim shingles worked perfectly!

Python drive bolted into place.

While the epoxy is setting up on the rudder shaft tube I decided to bolt the Python Drive into place. Not really much to it, just 6 bolts holding it to the bulkhead. Now that it's in I can position the engine with the jack shaft and work on getting it bolted into place.

Stern bearing carrier

The plastic fitting is Marelon. I couldn't find the correct bronze fitting. The Marelon will get epoxy glued to the stern tube (fiberglass) Not too worried about it coming apart. The stern bearing carrier will be bolted and set in an epoxy base. More on that later.

That's about it for today. Youtube video coming up later.

Standby....