Boat Yard Adventures: More Broken Stuff

A couple of weeks ago I took my boat into the shop in Seattle to do some periodic maintenance and to install the downrigger brackets. After I got it back, the engine idled rough. So, I took it back in again and they replaced a faulty spark plug at no charge, along with a couple of cosmetic things they also did for free. I hurried through rush hour traffic to get there before closing to pick it up.

They require the customer to hook up his own trailer for liability reasons, but I couldn’t get the trailer to latch onto my trailer hitch properly. Finally a mechanic, who was just about to go home, came out to look at it. He started cranking the tongue jack up (the thing that raises and lowers the trailer off the hitch), when it suddenly broke! He ran to see if they had a replacement in stock, but they didn’t. I couldn’t exactly go home that way – I’d never be able to unhook the trailer from the car. We pondered what to do for a minute, until they got a fork lift and raised the trailer tongue off my hitch so that I could leave. I have no idea what they did after that.

For the round trip I sat through two solid hours of rush hour traffic and still came home without the boat. However, I’m the lucky one. If I’m going to have a mechanical problem, there’s no better place for it to happen than at the boat shop. I also felt bad for the poor technician. He had a look on his face like the incident had just ruined his day. It must be a pain in the ass for them because it makes it very difficult for them to move the boat around their crowded lot. I guess I’ll finally clean my house this weekend.

It was two years ago today that my days as a responsible, productive citizen came to an abrupt end, and my life as a fisherman began. My boat arrived diabolically timed to just miss the entire 2021 boating season (and without the promised trailer brakes), but at least it fit in my garage. I did manage to squeeze in a few frigid crabbing trips that fall. This year I got in 15 days of fishing on my boat so far, plus the charter and three non-fishing boating trips. That’s about one a week for five months. There’s still time for a couple more. I have big plans for next year.