Boatyard Tale: Oval Shafts

Evening shadows crept on cats' paws across the bay and touched the two boats anchored off the outer dock. There was no wind. Faint strains of country music drifted over the water from the nearby pub and blended with night sounds coming from the forest on the backside of the boatyard. The disappearing sun sucked the remaining life out of the crab pots and old sheds that had hospitalized so many boats over the years.

It was a Friday and there was a small campfire in the dirt in front of the machine shop. The yard gang was gathered around swapping yarns as they were inclined to do when the weather was good. Everyone was seated on something—a five-gallon can, broken wheelbarrow, keel block, lawn chair, or whatever. Mudge, the main mechanic and a senior citizen of the bunch, was setting the pace for this particular session. Yan, in his T-shirt regardless of the temperature, egged him on. Mudge was easy to excite. And once started, he was hard to turn off. Diesel engines were his long suit, and he had jousted with the wooden-hull guys for as long as anyone could remember. "Diesels are the heart of cruising" was his complete philosophy of life.

There were lots of yarns to swap, and they tended to grow embellishments over time. More than once a year the subject of oval shafts would pop up, and this evening was one of those times.

Early in the season not so long ago, Lady Garbanzo stopped for fuel. She was a large plastic boat complete with a half-dozen aerials, two domes, endless windows, three-foot air horns, two barking dachshunds, twin spotlights, and a huge dinghy complete with dual outboards. The skipper prudently circled twice before finally edging toward the fueling station on the main dock. The sea was calm. After some bow thrusting and many forwards/reverses on each engine, Lady was finally sideways along the dock.

Fortunately Mudge was shuffling by at the time and he took a line from Lady passed to him by a diminutive woman wearing curlers under a kerchief. Even before the engines were shut down, a voice boomed over the boat's hailer: "Fill 'er up." The skipper was staring down from inside the enclosed fly-bridge. Mudge muttered, "peasant," to himself and acted as if he hadn't heard. He finished tying off the aft line and ambled away toward his original destination. In the meantime Yan and one of the yard's high school girls arrived to do fueling duties.

The little woman disappeared inside, yapping dogs in tow, as the captain descended from on high down to the dock. He was a small wiry man with a crew cut and gold chains around his neck; he jangled as he moved. "Fill her up, sweety," he said to the high-schooler who was standing midships, "Dieeesel, if you please."

Yan came back from tying off the forward line. "Can I help you?" he inquired of the skipper.

"Just wanted to fill 'er up. Here's my Visa." He flashed a quick, flat grin.

Yan accepted the card and gave his assistant a hand with the diesel nozzle. She was new on the job. Between them they got the fuel cap off and fueling started. In the meantime the boat’s skipper uncoiled the boatyard's fresh water hose along the dock and poked the nozzle into a deck spout located forward along the rail of Lady Garbanzo. Within two minutes the diesel pump on the dock shut off automatically signaling that the Lady's tank was full.

"Got another tank?" Yan asked up the dock, expectantly.

"No, that's it. The other one's full."

Yan clenched his teeth and proceeded with the Visa card ritual. The total fuel bill came to $8.75. In the meantime the fresh water filling operation continued. And continued. After an extended wait for a phone approval from Visa, Yan took the payment slip to the skipper who was just topping off his water tank. "Here you go," said Yan, trading the Visa card and slip for the water hose.

As Yan coiled the hose, Lady's leader scribbled his name and asked, "Say, you guys got any tricks for getting more speed out of this boat?" He handed the white copy to Yan.

Yan paused in his coiling routine, his mind quick-stepping through several scenarios. "You ever see steam rising behind your boat as you go along?" he finally dead-panned, looking down at his coils.

"Yea. Now that you mention it, I do. What does it mean?"

Yan ignored the question. "Do you ever have any vibration when you are running the engines over 2,000 RPM?" he shouted innocently over his shoulder as he was returning the coiled hose to its place under the hand-lettered sign: CONSERVE WATER. SHORT SUPPLY.

"Yea, it seems like I do sometimes when I'm driving from inside." Worry flickered at the corners of the skipper’s mouth.

"Let's ask Mudge about it," Yan returned. He'd noticed Mudge coming back their way looking semi-official in his diesel-dirty coveralls.

"Say, Mudge," he said, "this fellow's seeing some steam aft and feeling some vibrations. Wants to know if it could be hurtin' his speed."

Mudge coasted to a stop and shoved his oily hands into his stained pockets. He looked up at the sky for inspiration. "Well, let me ask ya," and he tilted his big head down to the skipper, now dwarfed by the pair. "Does yur boat sit around in a marina, unused?"

"Well…" there was a pause. "Yea, most of the time," he admitted. "But I'm planning to give her a lot of time this year from now on," he continued a little defensively.

"Hmmmm." Mudge screwed up his bearded face. "Sounds to me like ya could have a case of oval shafts," he observed dryly. "And they can slow ya right down. When a boat’s too long sitting, its steel engine shafts get out round, they sag like an old face." Neither Mudge nor Yan looked at each other.

"Oval shafts? Never heard of such a thing! Impossible anyway," but there was a trace of doubt in his tone. The skipper was pressurizing now. "And besides, I had the boat hauled and looked at two weeks ago."

Mudge shrugged his shoulders and turned to go. Yan, a smile cracking his face, was pivoting the other way to exit the scene.

"Wait!" exclaimed the skipper. "What would sitting around have to do with the shafts?" He was torn between departing in a huff and facing the music.

Mudge unturned himself. "When shafts sit too long in one position, the weight settles in the middle and the shafts get outta round," he said slowly so the words could penetrate. "They teardrop. Get oval. Gravity, ya know.

"Once that happens, ya start getting an oscillyation, an up and down motion as the shaft turns. This causes two problems. Seen it many times. One," and he raised a blackened thumb, "the prop wobbles a bit in the water and heats up. Friction, ya know. This causes steam, the kind you see behind your boat. And two," an equally black index finger took a position perpendicular to the thumb (Mudge was European), "the oscillyation sometimes makes yur stuffing box jitter-and that gives ya the vibration you mentioned. End result, ya lose horsepower and eat up more fuel at the same time."

"Too bad," he trailed off, and once more he turned to go. Meanwhile, Yan had eased to a position about six feet away where he stood with his back to the pair looking across the bay, blue-gray eyes twinkling.

Lady's skipper looked anxious. "What does it take to fix?" he asked hurriedly, glancing at his pride and joy.

Once again Mudge unturned himself. "Well" and he scratched the side of his face through the salt & pepper grizzle, "Ya got two choices. One takes time; the other, money."

"Go on," ordered the skipper, jangling a little as he shifted from foot to foot.

"Ya can rotate the shafts so they are opposite the way ya had them when the boat was sitting so long. Leave 'em there for the same length of time and they will sag back to round." He paused, searching his soul. "The other thing ya can do is put in new shafts. And if ya do," he went on hastily," be sure and get ones with at least a ten-year, no sag guarantee. 'Decade Shafts,' we call 'em. That's all I ever use."

The skipper returned to his boat and with Yan's help walked it along the dock by hand to free up the fuel pumps. Lady's leader then disappeared aboard, hidden from view by the tinted windows. Two hours later he emerged and found his way through the yard of faded dreams to the machine shop to get more information about what Decade Shafts could do for Lady Garbanzo.

Copyright © 2013 Steven C. Brandt