Water Leak?

[mgernes]

I recently noticed some water in my starboard engine room bildge on my 1973 53MY. I am not an engine expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I found that the water was a fairly steady drip coming from the shaft just in front of where the shaft goes out through the aft section of the starboard engine room. There is a small disk-shaped object(I am sure that everyone but me knows the official name) on the shaft where the water is dripping from. Any thoughts what might be causing this leak?

Thanks for any thoughts,

MGernes

 

[Genesis]

Yep. That's a shaft log and it needs periodic maintenance - nothing surprising.

It can be tightened down if there's range to still work with - if not, the packing needs to be replaced. It should not leak when the boat is at rest, but when the shaft is turning it will drip a bit - that's totally normal and indeed necessary to cool the packing material inside.

Its a simple job BUT if you've never dealt with this before find someone who has. They can show you how to deal with either adjusting it or replacing the packing if its necessary - once you've seen how it's no big deal to handle it on your own.

(BTW its also possible your boat was fitted with dripless shaft seals. The usual way to know is that there's a hose going into a fitting right near where that "plate" is you're talking about, and the hose heading aft from there has corrugation-looking ribs in it. If your boat has dripless seals, and they're leaking, you need to get someone to look at that IMMEDIATELY. Those kind of seals CAN fail catastrophically and when they do, its not pretty at all....)

 

[mgernes]

Thanks for the quick response.

I know that the boat is not equipt with dripless shaft seals since I have considered having them installed. Today before I left the Marina I stopped at our Marina office and mentioned to the service group that I wanted them to take a look at it in the morning. They have worked on a number of Hatt's over the years, but I have found the advice on our Hatteras thread is so reliable that I wanted to have some "hands on" feedback for them when I talk to them in the morning.

As always, thanks.

MGernes

 

[Nonchalant1]

Do a search on this site about "shaft log" and "packing gland", GFO, etc. Read those posts. There are even some pictures of what your packnig gland probably looks like with A B C for which nuts to tighten. etc.