Thursday, January 12, 2012 LIFE in THE boatYard.......

Today we spent running around Stuart… The guy that was working on our outboard never did call us back so when Wayne called him he said he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. After putting a rebuilt carburetor on it, it was still flooding and shutting off after 30 seconds. He said that he didn’t have the time to figure out what was wrong with it and wouldn’t have until next week sometime. We said we’d pick it up.

He was recommended by Mac Sails as someone that worked on small engines. We should try him. It sounded good. We were told it was a little place with not much overhead, but the guy did good work. I really want a working motor. It’s no fun rowing against wind and current in an inflatable zodiac. So he sounded like the ticket. We’d taken it to him gee… a couple weeks ago, and now we were picking it up, no further ahead. He didn’t charge us for his time or the parts. While we didn’t have a working motor, I still felt pretty good at giving a small guy a chance before going to the big guys.

We called Marine Max to see if they could help us and they said “sure” bring it on in. So we picked up the motor and ran it over there. Odds are if anyone could fix it they could since they’re a Mercury dealer. Grant it, they’re in the market of selling biggggg motor boats, but they also work on Mercury motors (yes, I guess even our little 5 hp one). So we dropped it off there and Paul said he’d give us a call in ½ hour after his technician was able to look at it. This is the place we were able to get the zinc for the outboard from before so we’re feeling confident that they’ll be able to help us.

After dropping it off there it was on to Home Depot for miscellaneous parts (locks, dowels, hooks…), Sam’s Club for provisioning and then back to the boat. I picked up a rotisserie chicken for dinner mmmmmmmmmm….and some pound cake for the Saturday night potluck. Love Sam’s rotisserie chicken.