Repair and relaunch Miss Nicky

Our friend John put a new engine in his boat, Miss Nicky II, this winter and during the sea trial he had some issues. He fixed those in the water at our marina but did need to replace the control cable to the stern drive lower unit. For that, the boat would have to come out of the water and that's where we found him on Sunday.

John enlisted the help of dockmate John H. In fact, John H (white shirt) pulled the boat out with this diesel truck and trailer. Another dockmate, Bob, also joined in. We were there to take some video of this project since we know next to nothing about stern drives.

Under an 80-degree sun, the first task was to remove the lower unit.

Then it was time to remove the old damaged control cable and install a new one. Not easy, it turned out,

There was lots of adjusting and readjusting of that cable to get it to go into gear reliably.

 The only way to tell was to try to turn the prop and we turned that prop many times before the cable  seemed to be adjusted properly. But finally, it was time to put away the tools and take Miss Nicky over to Brown Park to be launched.

The boat went into the water easily but once clear of the dock, that damn cable wouldn't function properly so John motored across the harbor backwards.

We know some people who would have yelled for help but John backed across perfectly and then went all the way down a fairway to where he could dock.

He'll get the final adjustment of that cable done soon and will be on his way to a great summer with that new engine.

The video from which the pictures shown above were taken is here.