Sink or Swim

My husband and I enjoy spending the summer and early fall boating on the lake that is just an hour from our home. We spend almost every weekend at the lake fishing or just sight-seeing. We decided to take one last trip this past weekend and then store the boat until next season. All was going well until we began to take on water. We quickly made our way to the loading bay and got the boat out of water. Once out of danger we began calling around to find somebody who could do boat repair work.

My husband is a gifted mechanic but this was a bit out of his league; the boat needed specialized repairs that my husband had no idea how to deal with. The gentleman we called met us at the marina and inspected the boat. He told us he could do the boat repair work but it would take several hours to finish. He said it needed special aluminum welding which isn’t as easy as typical welding. We really had no choice in the matter and felt we should not put off the repairs until next season as the cold weather might make the structural damage worse.

We pulled the boat to his repair shop and then headed back to the lake to get a room for the night. We decided to enjoy our last weekend at the lake even if we couldn’t be on our boat. The next morning we had a very nice breakfast and then took a long walk along the lake to look for driftwood. Late in the morning the boat repair mechanic called and told us the job was completed and we could pick up the boat any time we liked. He told us it would be best not to launch the boat for a few days just to make sure the aluminum welding hardens correctly. I know nothing about welding and neither does my husband, so we took his word for it and took the boat home. The cost of the repairs was a little more than we might have expected and we wondered if we had been taken for a ride.

When we got back home my husband called a couple of friends who are in the welding business and asked if the price we paid for the boat repair was typical or not. It seems we actually got a really good deal as repairs such as we had usually cost twice as much as we paid. After this experience my husband decided to take a maintenance course on boat repairs so that he can be prepared and knowledgeable about typical repairs. I suppose the moral of the story is, if you are going to own a machine, you should at least know some basic things to maintaining and fixing it.