I only tightened mine when she was in the water, I did not check the
packing. I did consider doing this though by diving with a mask and
snorkel and putting plumbers putty round the shaft before taking out
the packing.
My maintenance is not driven by the desire to "do things right" or to
look good (everything I do looks like crap) but by sheer terror of what
will happen if I dont.
Somehow, S2 seemed to be able to put in so much room around the engine
on a 28' boat that I could crawl into the engine compartment and
completely circumnavigate the engine befor crawling out again. Yet,
the cabin seems no smaller than other 28' boats with hardly any engine
access.

In article . com,
wrote:

Somehow, S2 seemed to be able to put in so much room around the
engine on a 28' boat that I could crawl into the engine compartment
and completely circumnavigate the engine befor crawling out again.
Yet, the cabin seems no smaller than other 28' boats with hardly any
engine access.

Our boat has similar access space. It's a matter of the designer not
trying to pack 32' of often unusable accomodations into a 28' boat. Our
Xan has nothing but stowage and engine under the cockpit, which "loses"
us a possible berth, but we've got more than enough of them already.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/