The Orca Yacht drive is the trouble free sail drive alternative. It has been used on many Whitbread sailing boats, production yachts and high performance catamarans such as “Play station”. It has also been used as a “p” bracket on displacement launches. When installation of conventional stern tubes and struts becomes a problem and lining up of the separate components takes up too much of your valuable time, then you should consider this exciting new concept, combining installation ease with mechanical simplicity.

The Yacht drive is a combination of a tube and a Kevlar and carbon fibre reinforced support strut. The tube is a hi-tech woven uni-directional fabric which is pre-impregnated with a thermo setting epoxy resin, then laminated and cured under pressure using the latest techniques to ensure optimum density of this tube. The immense advantage of this system is that, once it is glassed in place, it becomes an integral part of your vessel and, being non-metallic, it is completely corrosion and electrolysis free. It is very lightweight and strong.

The Yacht drive can be fitted with the Orca, PSS or Deep Sea Seal, all of which are dry gland - forced cooled seals. The Yacht drive tube can also be fitted with a combination of bearings, singular or outboard and inboard. The bearings mostly used are Thordon Compac, Thordon XL and Duramax, although any other specified type can be used.

Fitting the Yacht drive is extremely simple:

• For timber and glass vessels, simply line bore to give a clearance on the Outside Diameter of the tube.

• Cut a slot through the hull to accept the body of the strut.

• Insert the strut into the hull. The amount of strut showing below the hull should be the propeller radius plus 15% of the propeller diameter, to give sufficient tip clearance. Leave maximum possible amount of strut showing inside the hull - at least 100mm.

• Lift or lower the Yacht drive tube to give true alignment to the engine.

• Glass into position using orca chok epoxy-type resin and woven fibre glass cloth.

Yacht drive caters for shafts from 1" to 1¼" diameter.

© Henleys Propellers and Marine Ltd - 110 Sunnybrae Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

Phone: +64 9 443 5886 Fax: +64 9 443 5892