Sailor’s Run ‘Shafted’ During Solo Lap

Two weeks after departing from Bahia Caraquez, Equador, on a solo, nonstop lap around the planet aboard the Baba 40 Sailor’s Run, West Coast sailor Jeff Hartjoy, 69, reports that the sailing thus far has been "some of the very best I have ever done." But his euphoria was dampened yesterday, when he made a life-threatening discovery.

After charging batteries for 20 minutes with the inboard diesel in neutral, he shut it down, but a "strange vibration" lingered, and he could hear something "spinning and rubbing." It sounded like the prop shaft, but that seemed impossible, as he had locked it in reverse as he shut down the engine. 

After tearing through a lazarette to gain access, Jeff discovered the source of the ominous sound: "Holy Shit! The shaft had come free of the coupler and was spinning madly about as we were sailing at over 7 knots. Now unattached from the transmission, it was really wobbling and was trying to slide out of the boat, but was stopped by the rudder, which was being eaten by the whirling three-blade prop." Being a very resourceful guy with 75,000 sea miles under his belt, Jeff eventually worked out a creative solution to this hair-raising dilemma, but it took five hours of work to accomplish it, much of it hanging upside-down in the bilge.

First, he lashed down the shaft to keep it from spinning, activated a high-volume bilge pump, doused the genoa and staysail, and hove-to under main and mizzen. Then came the hard part. "I worked feverishly to separate the coupling, hoping to find the nut that had come off the end of the shaft and the key that locks the shaft to the coupling." He found the nut, but the keyway had slipped into the flooding bilge. He eventually retrieved it with a magnet, then found that he didn’t have the correct socket to secure the big nut, so he hand-tightened it, with hopes that it will hold together for the duration of his around-the-world trip — months more of open-water sailing. The shaft is now reattached to the tranny, but as Jeff writes, "You cannot even imagine what a feat that was."

Look for more on Jeff’s solo circumnavigation in the December issue of Latitude 38 magazine.