Before we purchased Oso in Norway, we knew that the rudder bearing needed to be replaced. Pushing on the bottom of the rudder yielded 5-10mm of play, and there should be zero movement in the rudder when pushing on it. For this type of rudder the bearing is a wear item, and after nearly 15 years of life the bearing was obviously worn.
While in Ipswich for a visit before the summer of 2023, we walked over to Fox’s Boatyard to check it out. Fox’s has a reputation as a place to have high quality boatwork done, and it’s one of the places that commissions large Oyster yachts, so it has a lot of experience in handling larger boats. And while we visited, we happened upon one of Oso’s sisterships having the same bearing replaced. The combination of a good reputation and experience with a rudder bearing replacement on a boat like ours outweighed the fact that the Ipswich location is out of the way, and we made plans to lift Oso for maintenance work in the winter of 2024.
If anything, Fox’s is even busier and more capable than we expected. A dizzying array of boats get lifted for work – RNLI lifeboats, fishing boats, survey boats, a small fleet of autonomous vessels, wooden schooners, and even the boat that carried Winston Churchill down the Thames during his funeral joined us in the boatyard. Large cranes regularly visit the yard to lower towering masts into waiting boats, and the yard seems to always have access to exactly the right tool for the job they are doing – if they don’t have it, they build it on site.
Replacing the rudder bearing means lowering the rudder out of the bottom of the boat, so a boatyard that has a lot of lifting tools is the right place for this job. And while we were hauled out of the water, we took the opportunity to tick a lot of other projects off the list:
- Installed davits to lift and hold the dinghy, and added a solar panel array on top
- Replaced all of the cockpit canvas to better fit our needs
- Replaced the 15 year-old sails with new
- New bottom paint
- Re-torqued the bolts that attach the keel to the boat, and resealed keel/boat joint
- Flushed the main engine cooling system
- Re-sealed a bilge drain plug and the prop shaft bracket
- Replaced the remaining original through-hull fittings, so that all below-waterline through-hulls are now new
- Buffed and waxed the hull
- New hydraulic boom vang
- Service for main propellor, and a coat of PropSpeed paint
- Replaced engine shaft cutlass bearing
Our experience with the work crew at Fox’s was strongly positive – everyone who worked on the boat was exceedingly competent and seemed to really want to do a good job, which is an attitude that hasn’t always been present at other boatyards we’ve visited.
The project management was not the best we’ve encountered – an initial timeline of 4 weeks eventually more than doubled. The problem didn’t seem to be the folks actually doing the work – when workers were assigned to our projects, they worked quickly and efficiently. But it seemed that workers were usually assigned to other projects, and Oso spent many days in the yard where the only work accomplished was done by us. Calling the experience frustrating is an understatement!
But in the end, nearly all of the work was completed, and what’s another couple of weeks in a boatyard? Before too long, Oso was back in the water, full of food and drink, and ready to point her bow north for a summer of cruising.
So why is this Part 1? Stay tuned…
