Job done

• Maintenance

Brandy Pad was hauled out of the water on Tuesday and it very quickly became apparent what the problem with the bow thruster was.

New bow thruster propeller

This is the way the propeller should look.

Original propeller – all that is left

Unfortunately, this is what the old propeller looks like.

Old propeller side view

From this side view, you can see where the blades have been ripped off.

Clearly, something very solid managed to get into the thruster tube, causing catastrophic damage. The good news is that all that needed replacing was the propeller itself. A very much cheaper and simpler operation than replacing the arm that converts the vertical drive of the motor to the horizontal drive for the propeller. About a sixth of the price in fact.

We are already back in the water, the whole operation having taken just over two days thanks to speedy delivery of the new prop from Kings Lock chandlers. The bow thruster is now working well once again.

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Thrust no more

• Maintenance

The Bow Thruster

This is our bow thruster. It has two large batteries on the right (you can only see one of them) and the motor on the left. The motor is basically a very large starter motor, similar to the one in your car. Normally it is hidden between the bulkhead, at the front of our cabin, and the water tank at the bow of the boat.

Thruster tube

In the image on the left, you can just see the top of the tube and the curve. The black dust is carbon worn off the motor brushes every time it runs. We use the thruster sparingly, so there is not too much dust present here. The small grey box below the battery is a fuse – a 355A fuse!

The motor

When the motor runs one way, it rotates a small propeller in the tube below, forcing water sideways, which in turn moves the bow the opposite direction. When the motor runs the other way, it then moves the bow the other direction. Except that, currently, it doesn’t do either. The motor runs, but the propeller does not rotate. I suspect that some debris has entered the tube and jammed the propeller blades. This then caused a small drive pin to shear and no drive getting through.

The tube is, of course, below the water line and there is no way to get at it or to remove the components in it without having the boat, or the bow at least, out of the water. The motor itself can be removed, but if I remove the mounting bracket, the boat would quickly flood and sink. So once again we shall be hauling Brandy Pad out to effect repairs.

Because of Covid-19 lockdowns, and winter closures to the canal system for repairs, we shall not be going anywhere anytime soon. It may be some time before I can carry out the work. In the meantime, the positive side is that I have had to work on my steering skills. Having a bow thruster, which is a luxury really, can make you a bit lazy about manoeuvring.

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