"Cap'n Ric" wrote in
news:JGx%g.3786$PA3.2095@trndny04:

I have a 2003 Beneteau 473 and unfortuneately I also have a shaft
seal. However, I religiously burp it if I think it is possible that
air got in it. I also grease it every 100 engine hours. I have a
max-prop so my shaft doesn't turn under sail.


Geoffrey's Amel Sharki 41 had a pressurizing grease seal on its shaft when
he got it. You took a couple of turns on the permanently-attached
greasegun that took regular grease cartridges every so often. The boatyard
told him that was illegal in American waters, probably scared a drop of
grease from a ketch would compete with the thousands of gallons of slimy
bilgewater the tankers pump overboard into the harbor with their ballast
and load of European mussels. He replaced the grease packing I thought was
a damned great idea with a dripless approved one the idiots at the same
boatyard forgot to put a loop and anti-siphon on its water charging
hose...which backed up from the bearing into the Perkins 4-108 flooding 3
cylinders off Florida and hydrolocking the Perkins at Ponce Inlet, which is
great fun to sail up in a 41' ketch with the tide ripping through it so
Towboat US can get to tow you to Daytona Beach hours away.

Is your grease seal really legal on the Beneteau? I don't have any hard
evidence, one way or the other, just what I was told.



--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.