Steering, rudder, shaft: the parts of a boat you never think about until one of them gets your attention, usually at the worst moment. On Vira I sorted them out in pieces. First the small things I could tighten at the dock, and then the big jobs, once she was finally on the hard in late 2025.
Day 2, and the first bad news
It started on my second work day, in December 2021. I was only changing the stuffing box clamps, a ten-minute job. Right next to them I found cracked fiberglass and wet, rotten core where the shaft tube is glassed into the hull. With the boat in the water there was nothing I could do about it, so it went on the list for "later". That list got long.
The stuffing box hose was wrong too. It should be 1-1/2 inch inside and 2 inch outside. Mine was 1-1/2 by 2-1/4, so somebody had probably used whatever hose was lying around. A proper one costs maybe $20, but again, it can only be swapped when she's out of the water.
Loose screws everywhere
In June 2022 I crawled in to check the steering. Almost every screw was loose. I tightened all of them, and the cable too. After that it worked fine, but I still didn't like the port side block: it sits on a plate that is held in by only one corner.
Three years later, in July 2025, I finally fixed something I'd been ignoring all that time. The quadrant sat a little too low, so the wire rope rubbed on the side rib. I raised it half an inch, and now the cable runs clean.
An $11 rudder sensor
In April 2024 I added a rudder position sensor. Mostly it's there so the autopilot can't slam the rudder into the stops. It mounts on the steel C-channel at the top of the rudder stock.
It came from AliExpress for $11, and honestly, it's nicely made. The contact slides on silver stripes, not on carbon like a cheap potentiometer, so it should last much longer. It only has 60–80 steps, which is a little under 2 degrees per step. If it's reliable, that's good enough for me. I added a third wire so it gives a voltage out.
For mounting, I 3D-printed a bracket that clips onto the channel, with ribs for zip ties, and an arm with a 32 mm hole for the rudder stock. A 3 mm stainless rod connects the two.
The autopilot arm that kept slipping
The autopilot arm had gone in a year earlier, but it was held on the rudder stock only by friction, and bronze on stainless doesn't grip much. Sometimes, when I fought the wheel, it slipped, and all the autopilot settings were gone. Worse, if it slipped one way, the arm and the actuator ended up in a straight line, and then the actuator couldn't push at all.
I had a key. The rudder stock had no keyway. So I cut one with a Dremel, lying in some crazy boat-yoga position. It was not my favorite afternoon.
Now, with the rudder centered, there are 90 degrees between the arm and the actuator. The actuator runs diagonally, from the port side of the engine room to the arm on starboard. It looks a little weird, but it saves a lot of space, and I can reach the motor easily.
After the water heater went in, there was nowhere left to put my feet in the engine room, so I made a little floor board over the shaft.
A pedestal guard, with my own plate
Vira never had a pedestal guard. I bought one for $100, and it fit nicely, except that the engine control handle hit the tube. Of course it did.
The pedestal looks like an Irwin original, and I couldn't find a mounting plate for it anywhere, so I drew my own. SendCutSend laser-cut it from 4.7 mm 316 stainless. They don't polish, and I don't know anyone around here who does electropolishing, so I spent two hours sanding, polishing and passivating it myself. Only the part you can see, of course. Two 1-inch straight connectors work as collars, so the tube isn't stressed where it goes through the plate.
In December 2024 it was finally installed.
In March 2025 I pulled all the wires out of the pedestal and redid every connection with glue-lined heat shrink. While I was at it, the tachometer and hour meter moved to the side of the pedestal.
Dropping the rudder
At the boatyard in November 2025 the rudder showed lots of small blisters and a couple of deep ones, one right on the trailing edge. When I opened them up, the foam inside was dry. A good surprise, for once.
To get to the rudder stock I had to take off the autopilot arm, the rudder sensor and the quadrant, and before all that, the water heater. Lots of boat yoga again, but in the end the rudder was free.
It's heavy, but I expected worse: maybe 60–70 lb. The plastic bushing was cracked and falling apart. I'm going to print a new one from ASA and add a Teflon washer. Inside the hinge, surprise, there were bronze bushings, and they look good. The skeg was perfect: no cracks, solid like new. Vic had fun that day.
That evening I sat down, drew a new bushing housing, and dry-fit it on the bracket.
Getting the shaft out
I had a whole list of reasons to pull the shaft:
- re-bed the strut
- swap the old packing for a dripless seal
- get the prop off somewhere comfortable
- free a coupling that had been stuck for 40 years, and grease it so the next time is easy
- clean and balance the prop
Earlier, while the boat was still in the water, I had run the engine in gear and cleaned up the coupling faces, so I'd have a good surface to align to later. One of the coupling bolts had no lock washer, and none of them were really tight.
At the yard I soaked the coupling in Blaster. With the engine in the boat there's only about an inch between the coupling and the stuffing box, so no puller or slide hammer fits in there.
Then one setscrew head snapped off. So I brought my welder and welded a nut onto the stub, and the impact driver took it right out. Stick welding inside a fiberglass boat is scary, so I laid a piece of 1708 cloth down to catch the sparks. It was worth it: no drilling, no re-tapping.
Then came the pulling. I opened the coupling, stuck the longest bolt I could fit between the gearbox shaft and the drive shaft, and started tightening long bolts between the two coupling halves. On the first try I only bent the spacer bolt. Four 5/8 bolts and brute force, and the shaft didn't care. On the second try I used a spare high-strength engine bolt, heated the coupling with a torch to maybe 150–200 °C, and cooled it with water, twice. Then: turn the shaft, tighten a sixth of a turn, turn, tighten... and at some point the coupling just gave up, and the shaft started sliding out. Done.
Good night, Vira.
The dripless seal fits. Barely.
The PSS seal is supposed to go on with 3/4 inch of compression. I can only get it on by squeezing it 1/4 inch. That will make putting the shaft back fun, and taking it out someday even more fun. But it fits, so we go with it.
In March 2026 I glued a temperature sensor onto the seal's graphite block. It sounds simple. But the J-B Weld wasn't thick enough to hold it, or maybe the cable was too stiff, so I ended up fighting wet epoxy right next to that polished seal face, trying not to get a drop on it.