Guru Marine

I’m a recovering clean freak.  I remember hearing at a very young age that “the last pig in the pen made the mess.”  As I’m commonly the last “pig” on a vessel when the work is done, I do my best to leave my work area looking better than the condition I found it in.  Sure, I do this on my own time, but the 5 to 10 minutes I spend tidying up the place pays dividends when its time for the owner to inspect the electronic installation or repairs.

One major level of detail that I’ve found is helpful for the owner is to guarantee that no by-product of my installation, such as wire ends and cut tie wraps, has any chance of ending up clogging the bilge.  I wear the standard military issue shorts or pants and pack the right cargo pocket to overflowing with bits and pieces of trash.  If my eyes land on trash left by someone else, it belongs to me now.  I’ve heard horror stories of small pieces of plastic sinking a large boat.

A minor detail that goes a long way is my effort to never lay tools on the deck without something like a paper towel or rag underneath.  If I’m working with a mechanic, I strongly urge them to follow this practice too.  It’s especially common for a fiberglass deck to look like the oil filter exploded in the aftermath of engine work. When it comes to unstained teak, grease and oil have no home there.

Sure, I have to be careful to not look a little like Monk in my routines, but I love to exceed my customer’s expectations.

Do you have any experiences with technicians leaving a place in ruins when they’re done?

Tags: General // 1 Comment »

Tropical Storm Fay is still beating us to submission, but I chose to hit the Golden Isles Marina today anyway.  I took my wife, Leslie Brooke, along for the trip:

The egrets were at play and didn’t seem to mind the wind:

My friend’s 1999 Viking 56 sport fishing boat has the original Northstar 961x GPS system, which continues to work well for him, but the screen went out recently (for the second time in two years).  Northstar has moved way past the 961 and outsourced the support to get it off their hands.  Sad, considering some of the systems went in as recently as 2003 to the tune of $9,000.  Lucky for him, I pulled out a full 961xd system last December with two working screens and updated computer.  

After testing the replacement and removing the old screen, Brooke and I went to work laying the silicon down for the new screen.  I’m grateful for the excellent factory wiring job, by the way.  The used unit looked so good that the captain couldn’t tell that I had swapped the entire unit out:

What “outdated” equipment do you stand by because it just keeps on working?

Tags: Technician's Log // 1 Comment »

The owner of an Atlanta area car dealership had rented a condo on St. Simons Island and purchased a 22 foot Sea Pro in anticipation of a nice leisurely fishing vacation with his family before school started back up.  He gave up on the fishing, what with Tropical Storm Fay beating down us, but he still asked me to check out his GPS problems, since he wasn’t able to get his plotter to work.

I sat through a nice squall for 45 minutes waiting for him to arrive, with a nice view of SeaTow firing up the engines and getting ready to bring in a SeaRay that lost engines in the harbor:

Kudos to Morningstar Marinas for buying this joint recently and dumping some serious coin in upgrading the facilities.

Onboard, I found a Lowrance LCX-16 Cl plotter, dating back to an August 2001 purchase, as well as a West Marine branded Garmin 276c, age unknown. Both initially failed to read the map cards. While the Lowrance required a hard reset to bring it up to speed, the Garmin suffered from user error:  the owner had slipped the map card in backwards.

Ever suffer from those DOH! moments, when a tech does something simple and then hands you the bill?

Tags: Technician's Log // 2 Comments »

I was called to the Brunswick Landing Marina to investigate a failed Raymarine wind transducer. What I found was an immaculate 2 year old 56 foot Oyster yacht. This boat has to be seen in person to fully appreciate her, though Oyster’s website is a good start. (You should buy one if you have a spare $2.5 million laying around!)

Though the yacht is owned by a couple from Miami, they chose to have it put in a slip here due to our reputation of being a hurricane hole. It’s been here a few weeks, which was perfect timing to avoid Tropical Storm Fay.

With the wind fairly calm and the sun mostly covered by clouds, I picked a good time to get closer to the heavens. David, the boat captain, prepared my ascent up the 74.4 foot mast by conveniently jamming a sheet in the Lewmar 48 electric winch and bending the self tailing arm into both the upper and lower plates. With no quick access to blocks that might bring the sheet to port for the larger electric winch, David decided to pull my 180 pound butt up the mast with the manual winch.

I’ve made a regular habit of taking pictures from the top of the mast. My Treo 650 doesn’t take the best photos, but I doubt I would be able to justify the risk of fatal damage to my wife’s digital Canon Rebel. Though I failed to get a shot showing myself to be at the highest point in the marina, you can still get an idea of the height from the shots straight down and overlooking HWY 341:

What’s the highest point you’ve ascended to, not counting air travel?

Tags: Technician's Log // 3 Comments »