Enough was enough. After slapping a quick coat of paint on this and that in the stifling-hot cabin, it was time to go sailing, if only for a short while. The tide was flooding with some strength across my slip, so I gave the engine a little extra juice backing out into the channel.
And then it slipped out of gear. Strange.
And the rudder was jammed to port. hmmm.
Can't get it back into gear.
hey this current is really MOVING, and not toward anything happy.
The anchor was neatly stowed below. Rode and chain elsewhere. That got fixed right quick. Sploosh. Snub. Breathe.
The shaft had walked itself out of the coupling. Of course, the beauty of the prop-in-a-fullkeel-aperture is that it doesn't have far to go. So I spent fifteen minutes or so on my belly in the cockpit making things right again.
I decided to observe the works as I ran it in and out of gear a few times before weighing anchor. I got to observe the shaft quickly and neatly sucking itself right back out of the coupling again. Speed improved by practice, I spent fourteen minutes on my belly in the cockpit making things right again.
This time I checked the setscrew. I can't imagine WHY I would have added a washer to this bolt when I replaced the shaft, but evidently I did, and it was preventing contact with the shaft altogether.
Lesson learned: A half hour spent facedown in the cockpit at roughly noon of a hot June day leaves me with a dandy bit of sunburn.
