This is a real-life example of the worries and costs an owner of a yacht can have
The trip
Frits owns a very nice 34 ft Contest, one of the best makes around. The ship is called "Beagle" after the famous ship which Darwin used. His biggest dream the past 2 years was to sail his boat from Holland to England. As they had never done this before, he booked a 3 week trip in a flotilla. This gave the secure feeling needed for a first trip. The boat was prepared very thoroughly. Every part which was not totally reliable was renewed, all checks needed where done. The flotilla-leader inspected the boat and gave the OK.
Bad luck
Once underway the weather was perfect. Nice wind, perfect temperature, no rain. It simply was impossible to have a better trip. But after a week bad luck struck. Frits started his motor to go into a port in France. Almost immediately it was clear that there as a problem. Black smoke and oil where coming out of the exhaust. Being in a flotilla proved a good choice. Help was quickly available and he was in port in no time. But getting the engine fixed was a different story.
What next
Inspection showed that the oil-compartment was filled to the brim . Most likely cause: a leakage in one of the gaskets allowing water to get into the oil-sump. A French engineer stripped the engine, changed the head-gasket and rebuild it. He started it full of confidence but alas, within seconds the same black smoke appeared and the oil-compartment filled with an oil-water mixture again.
The Engineer didn't dispair. He stripped the engine even further, changed all gaskets he could find and rebuild again. He started the engine but it was the same story: black smoke within minutes. Now the engineer and Frits both started to worry. There was not much left on the engine which could be fixed, all gaskets where now renewed. This meant that corrosion in one of the cylinders was the most likely cause for water getting into the oil compartment. Ordering such a cylinder would take at least several weeks. More time than was available.
Going home
Frits ended up sending his ship home by a wide-load truck. Once home he started informing about new engines. A big shock! A new Yanmar engine, about 35 hp, would be around $ 13.000! He decided to give another engineer another go on his old engine. This was a better engineer. He found a problem. One of the many nuts and bolts had not been tightened enough during the second rebuild. Thus the second time it was not a leaking gasket but an engineers error which caused the problems.
The end
Frits was happy, he didn't need an expensive engine. But he also
had mixed feelings. He spend $ 2000 in France on unsuccesfull
repairs, around $ 3000 for getting his ship home and another $
500 for the final repair. He lost 2 weeks of what should have
been a perfect 3 week holiday. And he didn't fulfill his dream
of crossing the Northsea.
It is very easy to get into the "bigger is better trap".
When visiting a boatshow, the large boats are impressive. They
have every luxury imaginable. But never forget that sailing in
a small boat is as much fun as sailing in a larger boat. In a
larger boat, not only are the bills bigger, you are also much
more dependent on other people if something goes wrong. With a
dinghy the most difficult repairs imaginable are related to the
outboard engine. But as a pair of oars are fully adequate to get
in and out of a harbor, repairing the outboard can almost always
be postponed till after the holiday.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that owning a big boat is
the dumbest thing you can ever do, but owning a small boat might
be more fun!
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