Underwater maintenance

Having finally succeeded in fitting the solar panels. I decided to turn my attention to the hull and see what maintenance was required.

It seems that the cutlass bearing is worn again, which is surprising as we just replace it last year. Movement is in a vertical plane which makes me think that the weight of the auto prop is causing undueo wear on the cutlass bearing?  It's not terrible amount to play so I'm going to leave it even though I have two spare bearings on board but they are quite tricky to replace and need specialist tools which I have at home.

I saw some small spots of rust on the  leading edge of the keel, so I ground those down to bare metal and primed with epoxy primer.  I couldn't source marine grade epoxy primer is so I elected to use a Portuguese product called CIN.  There is a retailer for their products in Porto Santo and the very pleasant gentleman is very helpful.  

The propeller and shaft had turned a very strange golden black colour which had never seen before and I sanded those back to bare metal and will paint those with two part propeller paint.  

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