Ahh. There is nothing better than a holiday weekend especially if you live in a state where you are never more than 60 miles or less from putting your boat in the water, whether that be an inland lake or river or heading out to the salty stuff. Nothing better, nothing at all, unless you work in customer service for a boat and yacht manufacturer that is.

   Thus dear readers my holiday weekend began with a series of text messages from a particularly frustrated owner of a 28′ express cruiser and if I may quote from the first text that I received,” Patrick!! Hi! I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that this will be the last boat I will ever own! Please call me when you’re free. I won’t take up too much of your time.”

   Yeah, right. But I took a deep breath and returned the call not knowing who the caller was or what the problem(s) might be. It turned out that this particular owner keeps his boat stored out of the water at a marina over on the east coast of Florida and at the time of his text to me his boat had been put in the water and he was currently tied up at a seawall just down from the marina. When I got him on the phone he was very agitated and went on about how this would be the last “Brand X” boat he would ever buy, how he would never buy a ”Brand Y” engine ever again,  how much he hated “Brand Z” generator, and so on.

   At this point what I needed was information in an effort to help this particular customer resolve his issue(s) and I know how hard it is to keep the emotion out of boating. There is a strange dynamic that exists between boats and boat owners and I may at some time in the future delve into that strange world of dysfunction but right now I will attempt to dissect what happened with this owner.

   Problem #1: The boat started to overheat as soon as he started moving away from the marina. Now I would like to think that most reasonable owners would shut their boat down as soon as they hear the overheat alarm go off or see the engine temperature shoot up faster than a junkie that just scored but alas, in this case that was not to be. I asked when his last annual service had been performed and I knew he was in trouble when he couldn’t supply that information. The reason I asked hat question was to determine if and when the water pump impeller had been changed. It looks like the water temp may have reached 220 before he shut the engine off.

   Problem #2: The engine will not start back up. I took him through some fairly simple things to check ( battery, battery switch, voltage, breaker, neutral safety, kill switch) but it still would not turn over. Not a good sign.

   Problem #3: On a whim I had him pull a few spark plugs and they were wet. Not with gasoline mind you but with water. Definitely a very bad sign and a potentially huge problem.

   Problem #4: The generator would run for a short period of time and then shut down. There wasn’t a whole lot that I was going to be able to with that since it was an electronically controlled model and had set a code.

   At this point his boating weekend is over or is it? Not for him as he was determined to stay out on his boat and was thinking about having another boat tow him out to the “party spot”. I asked him if he had a tow service and he in fact did have one. I told him that in my opinion he needed to call them and get towed back to the marina and have the boat hauled and put into dry stack until he could get a trailer and get the boat over to a qualified service center. Do you think that’s what he did? Anyone? Of course it wasn’t. I knew this because I followed up with him a bit later in the day and he was having dinner in a restaurant. He told me that as soon as dinner was done he was going back to the boat. Remember that strange dynamic I mentioned earlier? There it was in all its naked nautical nonsensical glory. All I could do at this point was wish him luck and let him know that I was a phone call away if he needed help but before I hung up I gave him some insight on his situation.

   Simply it was this. The problems he was having with his boat were not the fault of the boat, engine, or generator manufacturer. He, as the owner of this boat, was responsible for making sure that his boat was in operable condition. If you think that you can go three years between annual services or that you can leave your boat sit in a hi&dri for six months and then put it in the water and expect to turn the key and go you are always going to be disappointed. Don’t blame the people who built that boat or assembled the engine and generator. I also told him that if he wasn’t going to use his boat regularly, say every 3-4 weeks, then he should hire a Captain’s service to come out and run his boat and make any necessary repairs to his vessel. It’s called upkeep and maintenance. Believe it or not dear readers I was met with a bit of stony silence on the other end of the phone. I was quickly thanked for my help and hung up on. It’s not that some people don’t get it. It’s that they don’t want to hear it….you know…the truth.

   Capt. Patrick

   This is a video update of the post. Click on the link to see what caused the engine to overheat and lock up.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELaL4s0B1mc

   Hey! Look what you found. Another one of Capt. Patrick’s “Hidden In Plain Sight” bonus features. Makes you kinda feel tingly all over like you’re having a seizure doesn’t it?

   This one is a short audio clip from when Barry and his wife visited us in the studio.

   Click the link below to hear:

   Big Out Of The Water