Had an engine problem a little while ago on Lake of the Woods with high temp alarms at low rpms. Seemed like just an impeller problem, but I didn't have all my tools and didn't want to ruin the rest of my vacation if it turned out to be something more, so I called the local Mercury dealer. They were two weeks behind but said if I got it in by 5 pm the would do it first thing in the morning. Turns out I wasn't the only boat having troubles. There was a guy from Detroit that had a shop try to fix his boat and they were having troubles figuring it out. Seven times they thought they had it fixed and each time he put it in the water it broke down again. So what do you do on the eighth time in that situation? You back your truck down and launch on the only ramp in the area, lock your truck, and leave the trailer in the water to go test the boat. I got there at about 4:30 and the truck was sitting there. I asked some people on a lodge deck beside the launch if they knew whose it was or where they went and they didn't know, but it had been there a while. Eighth time wasn't lucky because 25 minutes later a boat comes in on the electric trolling motor to load the boat. He came over to apologize when I got loaded. It was tough to stay ticked off. He was like a dog that had been beat too much. Detroit dealer fixed his boat and guaranteed it would be good for his vacation, got there and it immediately broke down, buddies left him there and went to the island lodge they were booked at, only one rental boat available and it could only hold his three buddies, a local repair shop kept replacing parts saying now it should work and it kept breaking down on the water test, vacation almost over and he hadn't wet a line. As he said, no excuse for the lack of common sense or courtesy, but he sure was having a tough week.
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