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Knocked my stern tube loose -- how screwed am I?
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No idea why you are getting a 404 on the google album -- I opened the link in incognito mode and it worked fine. I've uploaded the images here as well, I guess my concern with just adding some fiberglass inside the hull is two-fold and stems from not understanding how the stern tube was held in place to start with.? ?1) If it was originally bonded to the hull along the whole length of the tube -- will bonding it just at the end really be enough? I have one hypothesis that it was originally only bonded on the inside with a bit of fiberglass at the end, so doing it that way again would be fine. Though I have no way to test my hypothesis about how it was originally done. I did try giving the stern tube some good wacks with a rubber mallet from the inside and I was not able to move it back into position. In many respects that is good news. Hopefully that means that once I do get it back into place it won't take much to get it to stay there. Additionally, since there is no wobble or play, I shouldn't have to worry about alignment issues when I add the fiberglass. ?2) My second concern is that if I do not have any sealant on the side that is in the water, that water will be able to creep along the outside of the bronze tube and cause trouble. In theory, the fiberglass on the inside of the boat would keep that water from getting into the boat -- but will it cause issues for the bronze tube and fiberglass to have that water between them? Looking closer at the stern tube, it seems the bronze tube is inside another tube, and the outer tube is glassed into the deadwood. So, I guess the question is -- was that bronze tube pressed into the outer tube, or was it bonded to the outer tube. One thought is that perhaps the fit between the bronze stern tube and the outer tube is so tight that water can't creep in. Or perhaps it can, but doesn't matter -- after all the inside of the stern tube is filled with seawater anyway. A different thought is that perhaps during construction there was a large hole that the bronze tube was suspended in so they could fine tune the alignment, and then they filled the gap up with some sort of adhesive sealant. If I somehow managed to break the stern tube free of that adhesive -- then a little fiberglass on the inside might not be enough. Alternatively, perhaps they thought that people would eventually want to replace their stern tubes, and so they made the somewhat removable. I've seen some stern tube replacement documents where they had to cut the stern tube out, But, perhaps it is a less aggressive procedure on a T27. So, I guess I am unsure how to fix things because I am unclear how it worked in the first place. - jeremy
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