Bummer, Brian.
What a tough way to find out how well your "serviceman" stands behind his
expensive work.
Don't know anything about your laws, but here you would have grounds for a
serious settlement. (Life endangerment, stress, pain, etc.)
Wish you good luck on the outcome. You've had more than enough of the bad
kind.
Rick
On May 13, 2016 8:15 AM, <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all.
Well, Nathan gives us lots to think about in his world,
even though he is exceptionally busy.
My turn ...
http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=20092
Some of you might
remember that last year, well before we had our house fire, I retrieved
my long-stored boat and spent a lot of time cleaning it up, making the
rig road-worthy, and having the two motors thoroughly serviced at quite
some expense.
Then we had the major distraction of the house fire.
In the 70's, when I was still single, on this boat I used to do a LOT
of sea fishing for tuna and other species, and lake fishing for trout.
So I wanted to use my fishing platform for trout fishing here. I bought
some suitable fishing gear to replace that lost in the fire, and bought
a winter fishing licence.
On the first few times when I tried
shake-down cruises, the main OMC 135 hp motor was very reluctant to
start so I had that sorted out abut 3 weeks ago. Turned out that the
design included two separate controls for choking the motor when
starting, and they competed in an unhelpful way. So my service-man
disabled the least useful of the two.
About 10 days ago I felt I
needed a break from house-planning etc chores, the weather was OK, and i
had the gear, so I loaded up with fuel and headed out to the lake.
It
was beautifully calm when I launched, as one photo shows. The main motor
started OK; I warmed it up, and set off up the lake at a comfortable
planing speed. I did notice a slight smell of heating but couldn't think
what that might be, so ignored it. After about 5 minutes there was this
urgent scream from the engine alarm system, I looked back and saw a lot
of smoke coming from the motor, so I shut it down. I left the cover on
in case letting oxygen in to the motor area would set the smoke alight.
after about 10 minutes I did open the cover and let the smoke dissipate.
Both banks of cylinder-heads had all the paint scorched to black.
I
called the service-man on my cell, and he asked me to see if the motor
would still turn over. It could, so it wasn't seized.. He said the alarm
was designed to go off before major damage was caused. I could not see
anything which would have impeded cooling water flow into the motor, so
it was a mystery.
What to do next? Well, thought I, I'm here on the
lake with the little motor which still goes, so lets do some rolling -
that's what it is for.
I set up a trolling line, and had some trouble
getting it to feed off the reel, so I pulled a fair bit out into the
water, by hand, and then started moving to get the line right out. Very
soon after, the little motor came to a very sudden stop. What the ??
Turned out that all that loose line, aided and abetted by the wind which
was getting up, had brought the line to where it tangled around the
propellor. I spent the next 15 minutes cutting it free.
By this time
the NW wind was starting to rise and I thought that discretion was the
better part than valour, and decided to head back to the launching ramp
and go home.
That boat is a great sea boat with all that freeboard,
and can handle a big sea very well. But that freeboard also means that
it catches wind too well when it is not needed, AND I found that
steering with that little motor is in fact difficult when it's windy.
All good experience, I suppose.
I eventually made it the 2 - 3 KM back
to the ramp area, and was trying to steer to the posts at the side of
the ramp, when the little motor cut out. The shore there is very rocky.
I managed to get away from the rocks using my third means of propulsion
- paddles. But they are difficult to use as the boat is so wide that one
person alone it constantly moving from one side of the boat to the other
in order to keep something of a straight course. The wind made it very
difficult - by this tie it had picked up to more than 20 km/hr and it
was blowing me to the rocks. Eventually I made it to the down-wind
pontoons where some campers helped me secure the boat more or less
safely..
I waited about 3 hours, all the time trying to stop the boat
bashing itself too much against the pontoon.
Eventually, the two
campers helped pull me to the ramp area using a very long sea anchor
rope I had fortuitously stowed on board that morning.
>From that point
I made it home without further incident. The service-man hasn't
inspected the motor yet.
Brian
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