These pictures are shortly after the complete destruction of the port U-joint Wednesday afternoon and the morning after cleanup of the transmission oil and small debris.
Bottom line, Brad, me, and our mechanic are all safe as is the boat. She may be trailered back to Mathews. Or, we stay in the water, and figure what's next. Someone remarked that we could remove the port prop and limp around on one engine nearby not far from the marina until a solution presents itself. I don't think that sounds like fun, but moreover, we need to get to the bottom of this first.
So, I ask you dear readers and fellow yachters, do you use your old boat or old car such that you expect it to perform as it should? Or do you baby the heck out of it and fear a failure at any moment if you should use in a normal way? We had the belief based on the restoration and rebuild and all the marine industry folks we'd worked with that we would be able to have the boat perform. However, only 3/4 of it performed as it should, 2 engines and 1 transmission/v-drive, while 1/4 decided to fall to pieces.
I'd pushed her up to 3600 RPMs on our return from St. Michaels, which is only about 800 or so less RPMs than when disaster struck. Was failure imminent at some point in the future and we just hurried it along? Who knows, at least not at this time, but having our mechanic (note - he is not a transmission person) aboard was, if anything, comforting.
Remember this picture from this previous post? Basically, the "neck" between broke. The Paragon died.
Right now, all the experts are conjecturing and tasked to figure out how to fix this. What exactly happened is now a figure pointing exercise. Frankly, if someone would just step up and say, you know, I think I fucked up, I'd respect that and think a turning point had been reached where my shaken confidence would be renewed in the folks involved.
It's a possibility that we will fully ditch the remaining Paragon and go with new (or new to us) gears. If that is the direction - there'll be stories a-plenty. If I loved yachting before, now I'm married to it. I can't sell a broken boat, so I've got to see this through. I don't want to sell the boat, but you can't blame me for thinking about it. 2024 keeps landing punches when I was getting hopeful that things were turning around. Silly me. So, all I can say is bring it on - and as someone suggested yesterday, "get a second mortgage, redo it all new and then refi when rates go down - you only go around once".
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