Winter 2012 - 2013

As a wooden boat owner, it can be difficult to find enough time for everything - when you spend all your time for several years on renovating a boat,  there are other things that get neglected. Our house and the garden show obvious signs of neglect, and I simply can't postpone it any longer - something must be done about it.

So I'm in full swing catching up on the neglects, and therefore the boat has to wait a bit. Fortunately, it was enough to make a few minor repairs to the varnish and paint, everything else was in great shape, so apart from that, the boat has only been cleaned and had a new coat of antifouling.

A few technical things had to be done though. The bearing in the seawater pump was completely worn out so it had to be replaced. It is a standard 72 mm ball bearing, so it was easy to find locally.

We had some noise and vibrations from the stern last year, which I found out was caused by a loose stern tube bearing. The large wood screws were no longer holding, so I drilled the holes up and glued a couple of 18 mm oak plugs of 70 mm length in with epoxy. Then it was just a matter of assembling the stern tube, drill a couple of new holes and screw mount the screws.

The launch went without problems, the boat only took in a little bit of water, so I sailed to Ribe right away.

And now a story about the absolute best service I have ever experienced:

My old Garmin 298 plotter had evolved a problem with finding the satellites and would search for several hours. Sometimes it would start working eventually, but most of the time it was unusable. After some searching on the web, I found out that updating the system software would fix the problem. But unfortunately, it was not as simple as downloading the software and installing it, because the plotter is from 2006 and doesn't have an SD card. It uses the special Garmin data cards, which are impossible to buy.

So I called Garmin to see if they could help. I got hold of a really nice supporter who knew what he was dealing with. We agreed that he would see if he could find a data card that he could send to me for the update, and he promised to call back. Normally this is something that you don't want to hear fro large companies - I have certain experiences with both telecommunication companies and other companies, where they forget all about you as soon as you hang up the phone. But that was not the case with Garmin.

He called back shortly after as promised, but unfortunately, he could not find a data card, so the device had to be sent to Garmin to be updated. He gave me an RMA number and I put the Chartplotter into a box and sent it.

A week later it came back with updated software, free of charge! This is what I call good service  - the plotter is after all 6 years old.

Many companies could learn from this, good service will pay off in the long run: My next plotter will with 100% certainty be a Garmin (in addition to the fine service, it is also good equipment), and I will recommend the brand to others as much as I can, which is hereby done.