The Sailing Brothersvideo
Propeller Disaster! Diver Search & Workshop Work
December 7, 2025 · 21 min · 22K views · Nelson Bay
What this video covers
A propeller spins off the prop shaft of the Sailing Brothers' catamaran while picking up a mooring in Nelson Bay, Port Stephens, Australia, leaving the boat with no forward or reverse gear.1:39 The locking pieces that prevent the prop from unscrewing in reverse were broken — a fault Adam and Luke acknowledge they should have caught.1:22 Rob from Squid Diving Co. in Nelson Bay dives to seven metres in cold, murky water and recovers the propeller after a 20-minute search.3:37 Reinstallation is complicated by a missing nose cone: the original spacer is gone, and without it a standard nut is too small to bear on the shaft correctly.6:25 A chance encounter with Steve, another Prout owner, produces a stainless steel washer; a local engineer in Salamander turns it on a lathe to 26 mm.7:47 Drilling through the prop shaft for a split pin proves impossible with available tools, so Luke finds a Navy safety-wire technique — drilling through the nut's flange and locking it with seizing wire — which they execute with a Dremel.15:08 The repair uses Loctite and a nylon locking nut and costs roughly £20 against an estimated £500-plus to ship a replacement cone from the UK.18:05 The boat departs Nelson Bay Thursday, heading south down the coast.19:55
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