Success!! She Floats (And The Motor Runs)!!

So you will recall that after two failed attempts to launch our new boat (the motor refused to run properly and/or would not start), we saw it being towed back to the shop by the dealer's mechanic. That was two days ago.

All day yesterday, we waited for news that it was fixed and that we could come and get it again (for the third time). However, we learned late in the day, that the mechanics were stumped. Crazy as it sounds, the boat worked perfectly with its cowling removed but failed whenever the cowling was attached. The mechanics had taken the boat to a lake near them and had run it for several hours. They had videotaped its behavior and had taken computer readouts from the engine and sent all of that to the Mercury Marine Company (motor manufacturer), asking their technicians for help. Meanwhile, Kathie and I waited and waited, growing increasingly frustrated at not being kept informed as to the status of things, but more frustrated that the dealer wouldn't come up with a solution for us. After some serious venting and expressions of anger on our part, we still had no solution at the end of the day.

Then this morning the service manager (nice guy who maybe should have been handling our problem from the get-go) called to say that he was having an identical motor removed from another boat and substituted for the one on ours and that we could pick the boat up around mid-day today. He said they would continue to work on getting the other motor fixed but that we shouldn't be inconvenienced by this. Nice! And by the way, when we did pick it up, they still hadn't been able to figure out what the deal was with the original motor.

Anyway, here is our new boat at our dock. It runs very smoothly, and we love it. We have done away with the boat lift, which would have been too small for this boat anyway. We are using newly-installed bumpers on the dock to keep the boat from getting scratched up and are simply mooring it to the dock when not in use.

Tonight, we took it out for our first major outing. I spent most of my time familiarizing myself with the new fish finders (it has two)–OK, they are computers, and I'm having a blast learning all their new features. They are very sophisticated and give us all kinds of useful information about what is going on below the surface, about our location (via its GPS features), and about the underwater terrain. I also spent time putting the trolling motor and the engine through some paces and checked out the boat's radio (listening to tunes while you fish might prove to be quite nice).

Meanwhile, some loons came by to look us over,

and Kathie made the first official catch of a fish from the boat. Things are looking up!