Milt Baker, Bluewater Nordhavn 47 #32 wrote: Scott Flanders once told me it took him a year to really learn his new Nordhavn, and I'm beginning to truly appreciate that. Every passage and every day we learn more. Each boat has a few pesonality quirks, and one of ours is the stuffing box which has required attention from the get-go. Once we get it adjusted, it seems to work fine on a passage--then we go into port, start another passage a week or two later, and it heats up again. In St. Thomas I replaced the 7/16 in. packing with 3/8 in. packing, hoping to open up the water passages a little. Nope. It still overheated. For the past 24 hours we have had it running fine at about 106 degrees with a good, steady drip. I suspect our problems may stem from the fact that the N47's stern tube and stuffing box are relatively high, near the LWL, and there's little pressure to force the water in. Even with no packing in place when I was changing the packing, the water flow was not what I've experienced in other boats. I need to do a post on the N47 owners bulletin board asking other 47 owners if they've had similar problems. We're learning! i haven't had much trawler packing experience, but 30+ years working with centrifugal pumps has taught me a thing or two about packing. basically it is an old technology that still works fine. initial packing, or repacking, should be finger tight only, and then the shaft run at low speeds for at least a half hour for initial break-in. don't worry about amount of leakage at this point. after the first half hour turn the gland nuts in a half rotation, wait another half hour, repeat until the leakage is roughly 4-6 drops per minute. if the gland gets hot (over 140F or so) at any point back off and start again. if you form steam it means the packing is gripping way too tightly and you've probably glazed the packing - rendering it nearly useless. trawler shafts run so slow that you might even eventually get the leakage down more than this. remember that tightening the gland nuts forces the stationary packing against the rotating shaft - more tightness equals more pressure, higher temps, more wear on the shaft, and faster wearing packing. the more leakage you are willing to live with the better for the packing and shaft, in most cases. don't try and throw in a new ring against the old - unless it's an emergency. always overlap the rings and stagger the overlaps evenly. many sets of packing come premade with an overlap - if not just lightly hammer the two ends into wedges to form an overlap (front to back). a way to get longer life from the shaft is to have the packing area undercut and hard-faced with 3-5 mils ni-chr-boron or some other accepted material. that will give you a surface in the neighborhood of Rockwell-C of 65-70 - very much harder than standard shaft materials. expensive but prolongs both shaft and packing life significantly. last point - packing is not a set it forget it kind of device - it requires constant attention to get the best possible life. just make it a scheduled ritual - daily i would think. jack condon - future trawler owner