Thank you, all. I am consumed with training at work until January, so I haven’t been able to get back to this. Some good friends went to pick up the boat at Berkeley Marine Center, so I wasn’t able to see firsthand.
That yard was a complete nightmare. The owner, Cree seems like a good guy but he doesn’t know what is going on in his yard. The yard manager Ruben has no problem lying about anything and was quite rude. He even threatened to beat up my sweet 67 year old friend (a commercial diver and someone who knows a lot about boats) when he questioned the quality of work done on the bottom. Of course he told his boss a different story. I can’t believe the amount of drama this guy caused. I later looked up reviews online and others have had problems with this guy. I tried communicating with them many times and asked specifically for certain things to be done, but they simply didn’t know what work had been done. I can’t trust any of it. I also had asked for a quote before any work was done on the engine and they didn’t give one, just did the work and charged a lot. Yes, I have communicated all of this to the yard.
I live in LA now, so I had flown up to pick up the boat when they said it was ready. They splashed it and tried to start the engine (it is a diesel Westerbeke 30 4-91) and the engine which normally starts right up wouldn’t start. They had let someone who wanted to learn how to work on engines replace the secondary fuel filter, and it was installed improperly with old seals and the seal was damaged when he replaced it causing it to suck in air. I ended up sleeping in my boat in the haul out dock and paying for extra Ubers back and forth to my car in Alameda. I had to go to work, so left the boat there. I called the owner of the yard who apologized when he found out what happened. He said I’d get a refund for part of the work... that they’d leave a check in my boat. There was no check.
The yard refused to tell me what other work had been done on the engine. They said probably the oil and oil filter and tighten the belts and change the fuel filter. More BS from the yard manager because he had no idea what had been done, though they charged a lot of hours for it at $120/hr. I should have done the work myself. Lesson learned!
The new bottom paint job was already peeling when I arrived at the yard. I was able to chip off big chunks of paint with my finger because they hadn’t prepped it properly. Photo attached of after I flicked at the paint once with my finger. There was more. I had them install a new prop and apply expensive prop speed, and it wasn’t allowed to cure the recommended amount of time before they put it in the water. I can go on..
I wanted to DIY some of this stuff, but they aren’t allowing it due to covid.
Anyway.. my good friends who picked up the boat believe that the oil type may be wrong in the transmission. There are separate oil types in each section. I will replace the oil when I can get back to Alameda sometime in January and go from there.
- Photo of one of several sections of where the paint was chipping after a new paint job.
- 423766C9-7D7D-4483-97F1-1A45E79BC75A.jpeg (4.26 MiB) Viewed 17218 times
