Living back on land in an unexpected way.

Mingo coming out of water on sling

 We have now been living on Mingo for two weeks when we decide it’s time to pull our fingers out and get the motor fixed and at the same time we will do some minor other outside maintenance whilst the boat is out of the water.  After talking to a few people around the marina most have said that our motor problems are probably just a slight overheating and the motor just needs a good service and oil change.  So we organise with the marina to pull us out of the water to what we expected to be 3 days.  

 Merc Motor before its service.

Preferring to use local mechanics we ask the marina staff who to use to service a Merc cruiser 502 Magnum 8.2 Litre motor.  We are then given the name and number of “Bob The so called mechanic”.   Bob is the beginning of our Disaster number Three. 

Andrew cleaning the hull.

First day on the dry stand and We and friend Steve start sanding the hull of the boat and cleaning it back to then spend the day in full overalls and masks antifouling.  Three coats later and the bottom of Mingo looks like new, shame about the rest of her.

Christie applying antifoam

Us antifouling the hull



Bob then turns up, does a few tests on the motor and tells us that it needs to come out.   

The motor pulled out to be replaced!!

We ask Mr. Mechanic for a quote, actually in a week we asked him at least 6 times for quotes only to be told no quote could be given until the work was done.  We started already to feel a little uneasy with this guy, something wasn’t jellying right.   Bob now had the motor in pieces on his workshop floor and the next phone call he tells us that the motor is broken beyond repair and that it will cost $28,000 to get a new one.  Yeah right!! No way.  We get Peter (Andrews’s dad) to tirelessly phone around and Google for us Merc Cruiser motors.  What a relief when Peter came back to us saying that he had found a motor for $8000, still way over our budgeted expenses for the boat, but what do we do.

Our dry stand home.....

So we now start our 3.5 weeks on the dry stand, what an experience having to climb up and down an 8 foot step ladder to get in and out and even more so in the middle of the night when you are half asleep and busting to go to the toilet and its raining.

  Andrew heads back to me mechanic  to find out what the hell is going on only to see that the leg was also in pieces and we are handed a bill of $2500. We didn’t even ask him to fix the leg, so were not at all happy.  He then takes us into his office to pull out his  notes that he had written re the motor and leg to find them all filed away in screwed up balls in the rubbish bin, and this is what you call customer service.

We get out of there with the old motor as fast as we can and head to merc service dealers in Coorparoo.  A week and half later for them sorting through our motor parts and back and forth finding pieces that Bob had decided not to return we finally get the motor back in the boat with one part still missing 7 weeks later but at least we are in the water even though not moving.