Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

Unfortunaty we are still up in scotland, we went out on trials last weekend and we found that the new shaft that we had to have fitted was running hot. We were unable to cool it down by allowing water to flood the stern tube so this pointed to something more seriosly wrong, so we headed first to Peterhead then after an inspection by the engineers at macduff we thought it best to head up to theslip in Faserbrough.

We took the prop and shaft out again and found that the shaft had picked up on the bush and this was turning in the stern tube, which had caused the heat.

        The New Prop and Nozzel 1.8meter prop                    

The engineers pulled out all the the stops and had the boat back down the slip on friday so we could leave the boat settle in the water so that they could re-aline the engine after the hull had time to fully settled in the water, as this was thought to be the problem with the bush being picked up.

So we are still in the Broch and the engineers have been down all weekend lowering the beds on the fore end of the engine as the gearbox, engine and fore end pumps were alined to high fractioaly, but with the old shaft this did not matter as much, but with less play in the new shaft it is critcal to get the alinement spot on.

The shipyard and ourselves maticuasly plan theese jobs but as with anything related to fishing and boats nothing goes exactly to plan despite our best efforts, we are all disapointed that this has cost us another 10days but there is nothing we can do.  We are hoping to start to make our way back home to Newlyn come the end of the week, to start fishing again.

The Tranquility will be heading into Newlyn today to pick up his boxes and to start fishing today around Cornwall again, so lets hope we will be joining them soon.