Prop swap!

We came up the lift on Saturday, and spent the weekend up on the canal above the Weaver. Saturday was another beautiful day, but cloud started to build up in the evening and we were woken up in the early hours of Sunday by the drumming of heavy rain on the roof. As predicted yesterday was wet and a lot cooler, but it’s been better again today, early cloud breaking up to give us a fine evening.

We got a call from Dave at Uplands around 11:30 to let us know that the slipway was clear so motored into the marina and were high and dry 15 minutes later.

Up on the slipway

I got stuck in straight away; Dave had slotted us in between two hull blacking jobs so it wouldn’t have been right to take too long.

Old propeller.

Work in progress, drilling the nut and shaft for the split pin.

New propeller.

By 1:30 I was ready to go back in the water.

Back down the slipway…bottoms up!

And getting wet again.

We gave a sigh of relief when Seyella was floating again. Although Dave was very careful, it's still pretty scarey watching your home hauled out of it's natural environment.

Off the trailer and back out onto the canal, the difference with the bigger prop was apparent. More thrust in forward and reverse will improve manoeuvrability, and cruising at tick-over past the moored boats heading back towards the boat lift felt to be just the right speed.

Whether the different diameter and pitch will change the harmonics of the drive train and get rid of the annoying whine at around 850 rpm remains to be seen. We’ll know better tomorrow when we get back down on the river. In the worst case the larger prop allows for lower revs, so we should be able to stay below the magic 850 at our normal canal speed of around 2½ mph.

We moored on the 24 hour moorings just above the lift, and just in time. Soon after we arrived a group cruise of 6 or 7 boats arrived from the Bridgewater Canal, filling the available spaces.

Locks 0, miles 1