Hauling Out Our 20 Year Old Catamaran to Fix Our Leaking Saildrive | PDG Adventures | S03E05

Since we left Florida for the Bahamas in November of 2023 we have been noticing a small, but seemingly growing leak in our port engine Yanmar SD20 saildrive unit. As good live aboard cruisers we monitored the situation carefully, keeping a weather eye on it and scheduled a haul out as soon as we could upon our return to the mainland US. The time has finally arrived for us to put our tiny floating home into the slings, up in the air, and start tearing into the issue. Is it a $12 repair or a $12,000 repair? Every day we're learning how to be live aboard sailors and how to overcome the challenges and obstacles that this life throws our way.
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Music:
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound - www.epidemicso...
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[@143tinaed]

Great video, the two of you are amazing together ❤

[@pdgadventures]

Thank you!!! We are still new to this whole marriage thing, only 13 years, so we still like each other a whole bunch!

[@boyddubard4197]

I was a Yacht Survivor before retirement. Several of the insurance companies I worked with required the gasket to be replaced every time a Saildrive was installed. You might want to check your policy. We had a client who owned an Oyster that had major misery due to repairing a Saildrive and not having a new gasket available in the Azores.

[@pdgadventures]

Wow, thanks for the heads up! We will check our policy and with our agent to see what it says and verify one way or another. Good to know!

[@reynadelrey]

THANKS FOR SHARING; GOOD INSIGHT REGARDING YOUR HAUL-OUT REPAIRS❣️📣

[@pdgadventures]

Hi there!!! What did you find most interesting/helpful? Always good to see you pop in!

[@reynadelrey]

@@pdgadventures // Thank you ! I found foreseeing & fixing other potential future issues while your vessel is in the boatyard most interesting and an “EXTREMELY WISE” choice 😀

[@pdgadventures]

@@reynadelrey thank you! We try to be smart but sometimes we just don't know what we don't know!

[@user-lq3ss9xf8c]

I was just there at Thunderbolt last week. Before arriving there I had an encounter with a 50 + knot squall, and a folded back connector and Bimini. Thunderbolt canvas shop fixed the canvas and straightened out the frame in 2.5 days!

[@pdgadventures]

Whoa, what a squall! Glad you're okay, sorry to hear that you had to make a pit stop at the boat yard, but Thunderbolt seems to be a great place to stop. They can handle any job of any size. We were very impressed with their smooth operation!

[@juststeve7665]

How does the dog "do it's business" when you're at sea?

[@pdgadventures]

We have the astroturf on the trampolines for his potty needs and while he's reluctant at first (he knows that land will happen sometime) he will use it after a while. We' haven't done really long passages yet (only ~36hrs) but on that passage we did take him forward to use it as well.

[@Harry-bh5dg]

Great vid, nice to see the explanation what a sail drives actually does, I wish when we moved it fitted into a barrow, we used 3 trucks, hopefully you good to go for a while now, will you feel or hear ( vibrations ) the difference now the sail drive is fixed

[@pdgadventures]

Honestly there was never any kind of vibration or noise from the drive, just the persistent leak. Definitely seeing the difference!

[@ducatiparts966]

my friend is the captain of Blue Moon they get all their work done at Thunderbolt, you picked one of the best east coast marinas

[@pdgadventures]

Blue Moon is B-E-A-utiful! Tell your friend they've got a fine ship there (not that there was actually any question! 😂) We actually got our survey haul out at T-bolt as well so we're returning customers and can definitely see being returning customers for a long time.

[@robertlaird6746]

Will you end up doing a video that talks about your debt and how you were able to get out of it?

[@pdgadventures]

We have thought about it but we keep hitting the roadblock on where to post it. It's a big and important part of our story and we would love to share it. Maybe as a standalone video on our Patreon? It would, of course, be available to all levels of members, including the free membership.

[@robertlaird6746]

@@pdgadventures What is a free membership and how do you sign up for it?

[@pdgadventures]

@@robertlaird6746 at the bottom of the description for the video you should see a link to Patreon.com There, cool, super, awesome, and extraordinary folks (like yourself 😁) have access to a bunch of extra content. There are pledged and free memberships available for folks who just can't get enough!

[@TaylanYalniz]

This would be very helpful topic to hear about, also the costs associated with this saildrive work would be helpful

[@fw1421]

A boat is a bottomless pit in which to pour money.

[@pdgadventures]

Hopefully not bottomless otherwise it'll be a great base for a reef 🪸! 🤣

[@Steve-qn8gn]

I heard at the beginning of the video that you went from 4250k in debt to this, it seems very contradictory to be buying a boat to erase debt 😂

[@pdgadventures]

No, sorry for the confusion. Probably didn't enunciate very well. We were 250k in debt but got ourselves out of it well before buying the boat. Full story to come in later videos if people are interested.

[@Steve-qn8gn]

@@pdgadventures ha ok, that makes more sense.

[@donraptor6156]

I have spent a Kings Ransom on Boats.

[@pdgadventures]

We are starting to learn that we could keep going without proper care and save a buck BUT she's not going to stay in good condition with an ever increasing list of deferred projects. We hover around when people work on the boat with hopes to learn just a bit from those we hire.

[@petermerrick5644]

How was thunderbolt marine and SMS always looking for recommendations in case we have a problem.

[@pdgadventures]

The marina itself is decent. Laundry is affordable, heads and showers are ok. Water and power are clean. The yard (technically a different business entity) is fantastic. On time, reliable, well staffed with knowledgeable technicians, and clean. They control their entire yard/ lift and seem to be able to service almost any size of vessel. If they can't get you out in the slings they can with the rails. Terry (our project manager) was communicative, present at the yard for all major processes, and knowledgeable. He even advised us against potentially thousand of dollars of work that would ultimately have been in vain. Much of the work done at the yard (probably 50/50) is with 3rd party contractors who have shops on site. All of the work we had done was through these contractors who talked to us about our needs then sent their quotes through the project manager so we didn't have to wrangle them, worry about scheduling or separate payment. Yes, Thunderbolt does add a service fee for this but in our opinion it's worth it. SMS was awesome, on time, knowledgeable and very much a service/servant mindset. He is one of the contractors who "offices" on site but he is also fully mobile. He was was happy to answer all of our questions whether it pertained directly to the job or not. Both Scott and Jay were a wealth of knowledge and genuinely good people. In short Thunderbolt Marina is a 100% go back to yard.

[@leeoldershaw956]

Saildrives were invented to replace low tech, reliable stuffing boxes and cutlass bearings with all the problems of outboard motors that you can never tilt out of the water. Terrible devices.

[@pdgadventures]

Thanks for the info. Good to know for the future.

[@Steve-qn8gn]

Seawind got it right with the 1160 lite and the two Yamaha/Honda outboards that tilt up. One other thing about the sail drives, not only aren’t they as reliable they aren’t like outboards with respect to hitting something in the water. If you hit a log/rock or container with a sail drive there’s a high probability you will be taking on a lot of water quickly.

[@pdgadventures]

@@Steve-qn8gn we've seen a couple smaller cats in the Bahamas with the outboards, but, I mean, who couldn't resist swapping out those for a couple Merc 400Rs right??? 🤣🤣🤣

[@Steve-qn8gn]

@@pdgadventures trust me, if the bays would allow it someone would probably have tried it 😂

[@pdgadventures]

@@Steve-qn8gn no doubt! We've seen this video floating around of what looks like a 20-24ft Macgregor with probably a 75hp or something on it basically planing up a river. Hilarious!

[@romeowhiskey1146]

Better without PEARLS.

[@pdgadventures]

Boo! 😆 I love my pearls, thank you!

[@daleolson3506]

The music junked another video 👎👎👎👎👎💩😬

[@pdgadventures]

Hi there! Can you please elaborate on what you mean? Was it in conflict with what was happening? Was it too much? What/when was it "junked"? We really are curious and want to improve our craft so your input is sincerely requested.