We're considering the purchase of a HR 34 and one of the few reservations we have is regarding her saildrive. Some intended cruising grounds will not offer marine infrastructure, yet we're told the hyphoid oil needs to be changed frequently. (How often seems uncertain: local dealer said each 100 hrs, HR claims each 200 hrs, Volvo is reputed to say 'annually'). Added to this issue is the question about zinc replacement on the saildrive (and of course, the prop - which has been discussed here before). I'd welcome comments from anyone with a HR boat equipped with a saildrive to comment on 'living' with this arrangement while cruising; it's got us wondering if HR has surrendered the design criterion of making their boats to be 'cruiser friendly' for the sake of maximizing interior layout.

Many thanks for whatever comments you might want to share.

Jack Tyler
St. Pete, FL USA

By pslevin on Sunday, July 07, 2002 - 02:17 pm:

Jack
Re Saildrive on HR34, I usually change the oil at year end and it always looks perfectly clean. You have to keep an eye on the colour of the oil to ensure that a seal has not gone; so allowing water to mix with the oil but that rarely happens and when it does, the parts are not that expensive. You have to dry out of course. There is still some talk about rapid wear on prop anodes as you know but the main saildrive anode usually has only about 10% wear at year end. On balance, I am perfectly happy with the concept.

Peter Slevin

By Jack Tyler on Tuesday, July 16, 2002 - 10:44 am:

Peter's reply doesn't really address my question, as cruising sailors often find themselves away from haulout facilities and in small tidal change areas. Just yesterday (7/15) I got a very helpful email from a cruising couple on MANANA, a H-R 312 currently in New Zealand. He explained that, while his zincs never needed replacing while cruising across the Atlantic, Caribbean and now Pacific, he's many times found himself putting 500, 600 or 700 hours on his engine (most of it, in gear) without any way to haul and replace the gear oil in his saildrive. What was helpful to hear is that a) these long periods haven't seemed to change the appearance of the oil, and so the many hours of moderate use does not appear to damage the saildrive, and b) he can check the level of gear oil in his saildrive leg, something I was unaware was possible from inside the boat. This leads me to wonder if the gear oil can not also be extracted - or at least most of it - in the same fashion we pull used lube oil out of the dipstick in our engines.

Does anyone know if this is possible?

Jack