Thursday

January 26th, 2017

Just hanging around...

Boat was supposed to get hauled out at 9 am, by Marathon Boat Yard, but they pushed us off until 11am...

Stayed overnight at the Sand Piper Motel which was so, so...

Next day the boat was finished, they splashed it and we drove away...

While Joell was driving I looked at their work...

We turned around and drove the boat back... the port drive shaft was "Wobbling", good thing we didn't bring her up to full speed...

Spent the night in our boat at Marathon boat yard and the next morning Joe (our mechanic) checked the coupling with a set of feeler gauges.... he then checked the four bolts that connect the coupler to the transmission flange and found them not to be fully tightened... problem fixed....

Out for another test drive....just putt'n along, put the boat in neutral, then reverse "Clunk" what was that...

Tried reversing again...no clunk... Ok back to Marathon Marina and our slip...

Got the boat tied up and just happened to look under the swim platform at the trim tabs...

The port trim tab (36" by 12" tab, dual ram) was totally disconnected from both rams,  hanging straight down and had slid out of its hinge by about 6 inches...

Turns out when we reversed the boat it put so much pressure on the trim tab that it ripped away from the rams because the threads were gone, not only on the threads of the bolts but in the plastic hinge located at the bottom of the ram..

Getting to work on Mikee Likes It...

Salt water "sucks"

Double Sucks.... it's hard on a boat...

Here's the Starboard trim tab showing only one black hydraulic ram in the picture...

So I've contacted Defender and gave them the part numbers for both the big 36" x 12" trim tab (hinge is ok) and the black colored hinge at the very bottom of the ram which attaches to the metal trim plate...

They'll be calling us back....

Now, let's talk transmissions...

There's something a clunking in the Starboard transmission when going slow... might be the damper plate.... still researching this issue...