Updated on 5/14/98
- What Luck, a Boat Story -
This is true a story. It is about a man, his luck, and his boat.
It was a beautiful summer day. My wife, Gail, and I had anchored our
boat in the calm lake, inflated our floating seats, tethered them to
the boat cleats, and floated for a few hours. The sun was warm,
the water was refreshing and the beer was cold. All was well with
my world. Nothing could spoil this day. "I guess we should head
back in if we're going out for dinner tonight", I say. She agrees,
and we lazily pull ourselves into the boat.
After a few minutes we have everything stowed, so I fire up the
"machine" and we race off into the sunset (actually towards the
boat ramp).
The wind in my face, the musical thunder of the motor
at wide open throttle, a hot looking bikini-clad woman in the
passenger seat. I'm not heading for the boat ramp! I'm on the
cover of Boating magazine! No!, I'm on the last leg of the
cannonball offshore race! We've just blown past Reggie Fountain
and we're closing in on Shaun Hall in the team Donzi boat! The
motor is singing, the adrenalin pumping..."WhaaaOhWhuuuh
Whuuuh"... and the prop is ventilating wildly. "What's that noise?"
asks the Boating model. "Oh", I say, "I guess I trimmed up
to much, prop's ventilating...nooo problem". I back off on the throttle
slightly while trimming down. "WhaaaOhWhuuuhWhuuuh".
"Oh darn", I think, "it's still ventilating like crazy!". Really,
Oh darn were my exact thoughts. I put the throttle to idle
and fiddle with the trim switch long enough to realize that all I'm doing
is excersizing my thumb. The trim motor isn't budging.
I drop the motor to an idle and continue to push the trim switch,
no action(except for my thumb movement). No more Boating magazine,
no more offshore race. We're broke down. "Well, I'll take a look
and see if I can get us going again", I say with unwavering confidence.
I fiddle and fumble around the trim relay panel in the engine compartment.
I can't help but notice that both water and oil are present in the
bottom of the engine mount area. "What's that stink?", says Gail.
"Oh, just some oil or exhaust or something, I don't know, it doesn't
matter". After a little troubleshooting, I discover that the trim
(down) relay only works if I push on it. So Gail hits the trim switch
while I hold the relay and "voila" the motor trims down. Beautifull, all
is well in my world again. "I wonder if they'll ever come up with
something that I can't fix", I say, chest puffed out.
Cocky, confident, proud, stupid. Gail winces.
"Baroom!" I fire up the machine, we're back in the race. "Whaaaahrrring!"
The motor won't go into gear. "Whaaaahrrring!", I try again. "Whaaaahrrring!"
" I wonder if they'll ever come
up with something I can't fix" echos in my mind. Fool.
I go into the water. After some time, I realize that the prop is
just kind of hanging there, disconnected, flopping around, useless.
Of course, I also realize that gear oil, "what's that stink", is
floating around(and on) me. Major trouble. We're going nowhere
under our own power. Oh darn.
"Keep waving your t-shirt honey, someone will see us! Don't stop
waving!"
After about an hour of foolish t-shirt waving, I light up a flare.
Considering my luck, as soon you will learn, it is fortunate that
I didn't burn a hole in the boat, or me. Those flares are HOT.
They are made of some kind of phosphorous. Do you know how hot
phosphorous burns? Neither do I, but it is hot!
Finally, a pontoon boat sees us and tows our sleek, racy, broken
down machine to the ramp. No more delusions of grandeur. I am
humbled.
We get the boat home, and I'm anxious to dig in and find out what
happened. It turns out that the prop unscrewed itself simply because
someone installed the propeller bearing retainer lock tab backwards. " What
idiot would do that?" So I put things back together properly so
this can't happen again. I am exuberant that the failure was
so simple and inexpensive to repair.
I tell my wife about my brilliant discovery and skillful repair.
Naturally she is impressed with me nearly as much as I am.
"Whaaahriing!" I'm testing the motor out in my driveway. "Whaaariiing!".
"Hmmm, something's wrong, the engine winds up but the prop just sits
there lifeless, slug-like". "Maybe something else is broken".
"Maybe something really expensive and really hard to
take apart".
Oh darn is not the thought that comes to mind.
I give up. I cry "uncle". I swallow my pride and take the boat
in to a local shop for repair.
"Are you sitting down Ray?" the mechanic on the other end
of the phone says. "If the only parts that are broken are the seal,
the universal joint and the coupling, it'll cost $2,500 for me
to repair your motor". "It's a big job, I'll have to pull the
motor and outdrive completely apart to get to the peices that need
replacing". I was certainly sitting down now.
After some fretting, I decided to build a hoist in my garage so I
could pull the motor and outdrive and replace the parts myself. This
should only cost me about $986.46. Yippee.
I went to the shop to pay the $986.46 and to pick up my boat. I went over some of the details of the job with David the mechanic. I painfully wrote a big check knowing that, in addition to gobs of money leaving our account, I had many hours of frustrating, back-breaking labor ahead of me. All this money and effort just to get the boat back into the condition that I thought it was in on that sunny beautiful day my wife and I spent on the water!
David and I continued the work breakdown dialogue as we left the building to go hook the boat trailer up to my van. I stepped into the parking lot to get one more punch in the gut. I noticed the boat was sitting at an odd angle, it looked lower on one side. "Something doesn't look right," I thought, "what was it?" Then I saw it clear as day. The main trailer beams had rusted from the inside out and had broken in half! I slumped momentarily, then staggered towards the trailer in disbelief. "David," I said, "I can't even take my boat home to fix it!" "What"?, he said (he hadn't noticed it yet).
"My piece of junk trailer is broke in half!"
"It what?", he said.
"Broke, in half, right there above the axle!"
"Man, I don't see that happen very often," he said.
It turned out that David had an old trailer that could be used (with modification and some restoration) to haul my boat. It also turned out that David is a nice, non-greedy guy. He sold me the trailer for a very good price. The trailer restoration began, it had to be done before I could even get the boat home to fix it.
The trailer restoration was difficult, dirty and not much fun. I spent many hours cutting metal, grinding rust and scraping knuckles. It is a restoration story in itself, but it won't be told here. I repainted the trailer, did a few adjustments and it was then ready to carry home my boat.
I towed the trailer to the shop. We loaded the boat on to the trailer. I hauled the boat home. All these things happened without episode. "Perhaps my luck was beginning to turn good!" , was my thought as I looked at my boat safely tucked into our garage.
I attached a come-along to the ceiling of the garage. This would serve as a hoist to help in removing the engine.
I recieved a phone call from David. My parts were in. I had ordered many internal components of the outdrive assembly, what they had shipped was the whole outdrive. It was new, complete and ready to bolt on, no extra charge! This would save me many hours of dissasembly, I would be back on the water in no time! I was excited now, energy coursed through my whole body. My luck was turning good!
I began removing the wiring and the bolts which attach the power head to the transom assembly. This all went smoothly. All the fasteners were accessible, nothing was corroded or difficult to remove. I was pleased, my luck was certainly running good now.
I hooked the hoist to the power head and began lifting it out. "Wow, this is going so smooth," I thought. I got the power head about 18 inches above the transom assembly, then I saw something peculiar. "What is that extra peice of metal laying next to the broken coupling," I asked myself. The answer came to me quickly. It was the bottom portion of the crankshaft, broken off, laying there, laughing at me.
The coupling is the weak link between the power head and outdrive. If an overload occurs, the coupling twists in half to prevent damage to other more expensive components. In this case, the coupling appeared to have buckled and turned sideways in the process of breaking. The coupling broke the bottom of the crankshaft off before finally twisting itself in half. The crankshaft is a very expensive component, and the whole power head has to be dissasembled to replace it. I had much more work to do. I had much more money to spend. My luck had not turned good.
"Give it to me, I can take it. How much for the crankshaft and gasket set," I asked David. "Eight hundred ninety seven dollars and twenty three cents", he said with sympathy in his voice. There was a long silence on my end of the phone. "Are you still there? Ray?" I picked myself up off the floor, wiped the tears from my eyes, and gave him my credit card number.
I disassembled the power head. There was a lot of work involved, many little pieces. I installed the new crankshaft and gaskets without drama. I installed the new transom assembly and the rebuilt power head. Everything went together without problems. I was very pleased as it seemed that finally my bad luck was behind me.
I was about to test the motor out in the driveway again. My heart was pounding. My palms were sweating. "Will it work?" I twisted the ignition key, "Barrrooom," the motor sprang to life. I eased the control lever forward. "Thunk," it snapped into forward gear, smooth as silk. "Thunk," it dropped into reverse, also smooth as silk. My son Corey came out to the driveway. "Dad, what are you doing? Are you through yet? I want to go out in the boat!" For the last two months of this repair project my 4 yr old son had been asking when I would be through so we could go out in the boat. Finally I was able to tell him we were ready to go.
Corey smiled ear-to-ear as we moved away from the pier. I slammed the throttle wide open, fully confident (and wanting to impress my 4 yr old son) the motor roared, the boat ripped across the lake. Corey's smile got even bigger. So did mine.
We stopped in the middle of the lake for awhile. My father in-law was with us. He is a very competant carpenter, mechanic, handy-man...etc. He is also a very good friend to have around. His name is Lenny. Lenny and I talked, relaxed and had a beer (we each had one, we didn't share). The waves lapped against the boat. The boat rocked lazily. The sun toasted our heads. It was another boring day in paradise. I looked back at Corey. He was sitting at the stern of the boat watching the waves, smiling. I swear, he never stopped smiling the whole time we were out in the boat. Neither did I.
All was well with the world again.