If you own a boat you know. If you don’t then lucky you!
Ever since I purchased Changabang there’s one piece of equipment I’ve wanted to replace: the control mechanism for the throttle/gear shift of the diesel engine. Although very corroded it works except for one annoying thing. There’s a button on it that disengages the gear shift, which allows you to rev up the engine when using it to charge the batteries. It’s not important at all especially since one can simply disconnect the gear shift cable from the engine, accomplishing exactly the same outcome.
But I had been advised to replace it and I had purchased the part necessary to replace it. Last weekend under Alex’s encouraging nudge we started the work. It was quite the party to remove the old control mechanism. We had to take it apart just to get it out, which took many hours. Once we had it out we had to surrender to the fact that we were not going to be able to salvage the throttle lever. Lucky for us, Helmut’s Marine had one in stock, which Alex picked up Monday.
And so yesterday we finished the work. Today I confirmed that everything seems to work as intended. In fact, it looks for one reason or another we managed to gain one extra knot of boat speed. Our max motoring speed is now 7.28 kts. I don’t want to write a blow by blow recap of how this project went because, at every turn, we had to improvise a little, purchase new tools and hardware.
We also addressed a nagging problem. The port backstay clutch was not gripping the rope. No amount of cleaning would fix it. We took it off the boat, opened it, partly disassembled it, removed the rust, did a bit of sanding, and put it back into action. I also hope this repair will last. When things had to be done fast this clutch was a real liability when switching backstay. I’m glad we worked on this.
