Pateco. What did you do to get that shaft so clean and shiny after the "before" pic?
I got most of the shaft clean before I started. I had just paid to have the Stargazer moved from Baltimore to Pompano beach FL, when after our first couple of runs under power in the ICW, Intracoastal Water Way, I noticed a large increase in the water dripping from my packing gland.
(It was filling the engine bilge in less than 24 hours), I could not afford to haul her again, So I searched on this site, and learned how to change it while in the water. Thank you to
Ralph Johnstone 
I knew I was going to have to back tho old packing and nut over the shaft area, and needed to have a clean surface to work with for installing the new packing quickly while the boat was in the water. So I started the Yanmar, and while at idle, I put it in reverse and made sure that it was not pulling too hard on my dock lines. I then went below, and used some simple green and a green scotch bright pad held up against the turning shaft. it only took a few minutes of that to clean the exposed shaft.
The nuts were a lot harder. I used the same green scotch bright pad and several small brass wire brushes, in combination with some barkeepers friend to clean the threads and nuts. It didn't work great, but got most of the corrosion off. Once I rinsed that well with water, I lubricated everything with multiple soaks of PB Blaster before I even tried backing of the locking nut, and it was still a pain. I thought about applying heat with a torch, but was afraid of either starting a PB Blaster fire and/or melting the rubber boot seal. I used two hand me down wrenches similar to the picture below that I inherited from two different generations of my family.
(got to love hand me down tools)
After multiple attempts. it finally nudged loose, and I was able to worry it back and forth all the while dousing with PB Blaster until it began to spin. Once it was backed off, the water streaming in was actually less than I had feared. With my lovely wife Michelle bailing into the main bilge, I cleaned up the newly exposed shaft with the scotch bright pad, and went to work on the packing.
I had a set of dental picks and scrapers,
(again hand me down, this time from my uncle the retired dentist) ,that I used to pick out the old packing and to tamp in the new. The previous owner had two layers of quarter inch where it's supposed to be three layers of three sixteenths. Thought I was going to break a dental pick before it started to come out. Once I got it all removed, I lubed up the new packing with Syntef before installing.
Once it was in snug, I reattached the nut and tightened just until the drip stopped.
