This week my appointment came up to take the boat down to the dealer in Seattle to fix my MFD (Multifunction Display), which is combination navigation system, fish finder, engine monitor, etc. It had crashed on me right before the trip to the San Juan Islands, and wouldn’t boot up again. I thought that the “squeaky engine” problem had gone away, but it does come back again occasionally – it happened on Sunday. The shop couldn’t troubleshoot the problems any further, so they ripped out the MFD and sent it to Raymarine for repair, and said they currently have a five-week backlog. It doesn’t speak well of Raymarine. The dealer told me they’d put in a temporary panel in so I wouldn’t have a big hole in my helm. For the engine, the manufacturer wants to disassemble my gearbox themselves to investigate the problem. However, I can wait until at least September to start that work. None of these issues appear to be Boston Whaler’s fault, other than maybe making a poor choice of vendors. All this work is being done for free under warranty. Anyway, new boats aren’t like new cars, and it’s quite common to have issues like this when they’re fresh off the factory floor.
I got my boat back from the shop today. Even they had said they they’d rip out my non-functional MFD and send it out for repair, they changed their mind and put in a new one instead! Now I have the fish finder and depth sounder back again. Hopefully I’m now good to go for the summer. Even though I had a lot of issues with the Union Marine salesman who sold me the boat, the service center has been amazing to work with.
[Prologue January 2025] the following year, Boston Whaler dumped Raymarine for their new boats in favor of Simrad electronics.
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