When we first took possession of our boat in winter 2018, her propeller was an unseen and unknown entity 'down below'. Yes, it turned and so we moved from the north of Germany down to Straßburg, but what it looked like remained a mystery until we took Sulina out of the water and onto the ground.
Ah, there it is, such an encrusted piece of bronze, but what a pretty shape. We thought that cleaning up the propeller would make for greater efficiency moving through the water, but also, and perhaps more importantly, we just felt that such a lovely crafted piece of metal deservd to be brought back to its original state.
Hours of work with wire brush, angle grinder, sandpaper, burnishing pad rewarded us with this wonderfully gleaming propeller. The French boaters around us laughed and said,
'Leeza, that is what you do last, not first!'
But I was very happy with the result.
Sulina's propeller before.....
And after restoration
Sulina's propeller turned unwearyingly and true until our trouble in Osijek in Croatia (see Blog post '2 Meters with Rocks') where we got stuck on rocks and only managed to free ourselves with the help of 3 small boats and a lot of heavy engine usage, forward and back.
The damage is clear, a small piece of bronze broken off one fin, another fin twisted and the edges all nibbled.
But how did we get the propeller off?
There was no boatyard anywhere around. Well, that took place in Novi Sad at the little marina Vojvodina where we stayed after checking into Serbia. We'd had to drive fairly slowly since Osijek and the engine wouldn't go above 1000 rpm, a big disadvantage in general and nearly impossible when we had to drive 3 kilometers upstream from Customs to the marina. We were also concerned that further use of an unbalanced and damaged propeller could cause more serious problems, for example, to the bearings or the shaft itself.
The sailing club at the marina owned a winch and large trailer which they used for taking their own smaller boats out of the water for the winter. So we managed with that equipment and their help to get our 7 1/2 ton Sulina partway out of the water, stern up, because the trailer was only built for 4 tons. A local boat mechanic was engaged who cheerfully and without hesitation waded into the water and removed the propeller within a quarter of an hour, to our amazement.
And now what? Our propeller-less boat was towed by 2 small boats back to our mooring and the next day we took a bus out to Stara Pazova to Marko, a recommended bronze propeller specialist welder. He took the propeller but could only let us know the next day whether it would be possible to repair it, as it was too hot, around 40 degrees, to use the blowtorch. The report came that it wasn't possible, unseen cracks could develop in the metal, and we'd be better advised to get a new propeller. He managed to find one which would fit, but it was raw and had no hole drilled yet. And unfortunately, his lathe wasn't big enough for the job. But Bogdan, the helpful young handyman at the club, had a friend whose father knew a man with a big enough lathe, so we agreed to buy the propeller. Marko drove it over to the club and our jaws dropped when we saw the roughly cast ALUMINIUM propeller that was meant to replace our bronze one.
The aluminium propeller
But what could we do? We felt there was no alternative but to take the wildly overpriced piece and hope for the best. It went to Dule for the machining and a frustrating 2 weeks of waiting followed, until he finally turned up at the club, having repaired the original BRONZE propeller! The aluminium one was such poor quality that he refused to machine it, suggesting that it would break up if we touched bottom. So the next day we put the bronze propeller back on again, after 3 guys from the club consulted together and decided it ought to be fine and what we should do is just test it out! Ha! That's exactly what we did and Sulina purrs along now, not quite as perfect as before, but just fine.
The repaired bronze propeller
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