Ahhhh! New Years eve. The evening where you get to use all those out of date flares! Rocket flare out the front of my place last night, not sure where it landed. Not sure people understand how dangerous these are fired off over land! Its not just the Coastal Patrol setting fire to the scrub during demos. Neigbour at the rear fired off a red flare late in the evening after the breeze had faded. We endured the nicely covered smoke. Not sure he was expecting that much smoke either.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year.

54 reads and only 1 reply, tough crowd...

Happy 2014 to you Ramona.

We sailed across for the local family fireworks at 9.00, and came back just before ready to pick the mooring while just enough light.
Dropped the sails, motoring back just entering the narrow local channel,all good, and the outboard changes pitch slightly and speeds up a bit. (Yamaha 9.9 high thrust).

The boat starts to slow down.
Still running ok, pumping water, prop still turning...
Bugger, slowing down more....
Slight outgoing tide and fortunately light wind...

Cross your fingers legs etc, and just enough drive somehow to get to the mooring, which was picked up first time and with no reverse.

Checked it today, hoping the outboard faireys may have made a visit, but still the same.
Prop spins, forward and reverse select ok, water pumping etc, but still maybe only 10% of normal drive though.

The bad sign though is you can turn the prop by hand with the engine switched off and in gear, so maybe splines on top of driveshaft, or gears on the end of the propshaft? The disappointing thing was it was serviced only 2 months/2 hours running time ago and had a new impellor fitted, so the leg would have been dropped then.

Saturdays job looks like attempt to remove the leg whilst on the boat....

but it was a good sail though.

yep, all the best to you too Ramona