Water in Transmission from Leak in Saildrive Seals

A couple of weeks ago we were doing a quick inspection before setting off when Captain Keith found water in the transmission fluid on the starboard engine. Bad.

This was caused by water entering through the sail drive seals, directly into the transmission. After some intense debate about how all this would NOT be covered under warranty (of course) we made arrangements to haul it out, remove the props, fix the seal and get back on our way.

Driscoll Boat Yard on Shelter Island in San Diego hauled it out and our friends at Admiralty Marine – the Volvo Penta authorized factor reps, did the repairs. If you’ve never seen a big boat pulled out of the water, you can watch the video.

The Bad News

According to our diver, Art, fishing line gets caught up in sail drives all the time. One way to prevent the issue from happening as often is to find propellers that fit more snugly onto the sail drive shaft – leaving less of a gap for fishing line to penetrate.

One repair leads to another. More stuff to buy and always stuff to fix. Boats!

Big gap – more fishing line – more haul outs and repairs.