I eventually found a rubberduck I thought would do the trick. Many hours were spent on gumtree searching through the classifieds looking for that needle in a haystack deal. When what appeared to be a good deal surfaced I pounced and I towed home a 4.7m Prestige CAT duck with a 90HP Yamaha 2 stroke.
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| Boat with old pontoons |
Now I might be a hands on sort of person but I am not a mechanic and even less so a marine/boat mechanic. So for peace of mind I dropped the boat off at a local Yamaha dealer for its service and a general once over. Well thats when the first foot hit my nether regions, they saw me coming. I was way to trusting and ended up with a bill for R7000.00, thats R5000.00 more than I was quoted. Did they phone me to get the "all good" for the extra work? No, that would be customer service, and we live in PE, we just bend and take it. The best of all was a charge of R250.00 to replace a single bolt on the tow hitch of my trailer!
OK, enough with the venting. The moral of the story is, pretend you know what you are talking about and try hard not to look like a walk over. It also helped that the owner was a few feet shorter than me, but I got a decent discount on the original invoice after I raised my voice. It's also comforting to know that there is a new Yamaha agency that has opened in PE to add a little competition to the industry, let hope like hell that pans out well for us plebs.
Well I towed home a boat that now was not such a great deal after all. But wait the best is still to come, the pontoons, like a knife to my heart that word still rings in my ears. Yip, my ignorant self thought "well they look in decent condition" when I bought the boat. How ignorant I was, it was becoming more evident each time I took the boat out that I would soon need to have the boat re-pontooned. Well my suspicions were realized when after a scorcher of a day in PE the one tube in the pontoons burst a seam. Yes I know what you are going to say, "don't leave the boat in the sun", "deflate the tube when not being used" blah, blah. and I was new to the inflatable boat scene and coupled with being somewhat forgetful I now had to re-pontoon the boat.
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| Boat with new pontoons |
Well now the "good deal" was totally out the window! But hey, I have a new boat, as over capitalized as it is. But then one day I stumbled on the C-Ski 440 and suddenly I need to find a buyer for my rubber duck. This is never ending!
