Unbelievably, our diver Björn arrived later in the afternoon, and after checking the bottom of the harbour for a good half hour, found the prop, undamaged, and with all parts complete!
How lucky is that!
Next task was for Mats to find a yard that could lift us out, mast up, hold us in a sling to refit the prop, and drop us back in again.
Unfortunately, this is launch time for every boat in the area, so we had to wait until he called back to say Svinninge marina would squeeze us into their schedule after the weekend, early on Tuesday morning, if we were there the night before ready to go.
So on Monday afternoon, we were towed across to Svinninge to await our refit – prop and water pump ….. remember the water pump?!
And there it is – or isn’t. Our second piece of luck was that the rope cutter was still in place. (That’s used to shred a line if it gets entangled in the prop – it’s only happened once, but very useful!)
And now Linas was able to reattach the propeller and make sure it was well-screwed and glued so that it was unlikely to happen again.
[After some research, we reckon that when the propellor was removed at the factory to fit the rope cutter it may not have been refitted perfectly. 5 years later, after 7500 nautical miles and 900 engine hours, off it spun. The make of propellor, though common, has since had it’s method of attachment altered, so perhaps we are not the only boats to lose a prop].
And finally, a bottle of bubbly from Mats to sweeten the 28000 krone bill! LOL
That’s a two grand oucher, but hey it was so good that if it had to spin off , it chose there to so do, rather than when you really needed thrust through the water … don’t even dream up scenarios as it will give you nightmares!