June 18, 2018

Consumer Horror Story

My folks are in town for a few days. My dad has hauled their sailboat for maintenance in anticipation of sailing it to N.C. and berthing it near their home. I stopped by today to see if he needed any help.


 He was talking to a man who was admiring the boat's bow thruster and asked Dad who he'd gotten to install it. Well, Dad did, but said he couldn't offer any insights as he knew little specific about bow thrusters and installing it had involved much panic, worry and repeated measurements and yet more measurements, both external and internal as we were very paranoid about cutting through something vital. He noted that the actual process, once the tunnel was cut was fairly straightforward, with me holding the motor in place and passing him the wires from the outside while he connected everything after which we were able to seal the small through-hull. 

The fellow Dad was talking to pointed to his boat and noted with some remorse that he'd had his bow thruster installed at a nearby shipyard and the job had really not been satisfactory. When asked if it was an electrical problem the gentleman said "No. They put it in the wrong spot." I winced when hearing this as 'wrong spot' sounded like they'd cut through a major structural/load bearing member, which would likely mean the boat was ruined. 

Fortunately, for the structural integrity of his boat, that was not the case.
It was, however, arguably worse. 

"It's not below the waterline."

This poor fellow has a bow thruster, running through his bow...above the water-line. You know...the water line, that line around the boat that the hull is painted in jarringly different colors on either side of. Below which there is water and propellors will work, above which  any propulsion on a boat is generated by sails or airscrews.

HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN!?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:58 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 320 words, total size 2 kb.

1 That's like taking your car to an auto shop and finding that they installed bike pedals.   At best.

Posted by: Ubu at Tue Jun 19 15:40:44 2018 (SlLGE)

2 Clearly the one union guy responsible for that particular inspection was out of the shop that week.
(Why did this guy accept delivery in the first place?)

Posted by: Cadrys at Tue Jun 19 20:05:24 2018 (QFF/9)

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What colour is a green orange?




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