By Mark Raudenbush:
When Coastal Angler asked me if I would be interested in writing a monthly article on boat maintenance, service and repairs, at first I wasn’t excited about it. There are only a select few in this world that truly enjoy writing and I’m generally not in that class. In fact, back in my grade school days I was probably more likely to be on the boat than in the class at all. However, it occurred to me that I have a unique perspective that might be helpful to the thousands of readers of Coastal Angler in our area.
That unique perspective is that I have not always been on the service side of the service desk, in fact I’ve spent most of my life looking at service and repairs from the side opposite the service desk opening my wallet for service and repairs. I only recently have I made the jump across the desk to the service providers’ desk. I still think of myself more as a consumer of marine service than a provider. My memories are fresh of service invoices filled with cryptic descriptions and part numbers that seem more like alphabet soup than part descriptions. I know what it feels like to not know exactly what I was paying for and if it truly was money well spent.
When I recently took over the helm here at Wolcott Marine I knew that I had a lot of learning to do. I knew what I didn’t know. But worry not, you’ll not be taking advice from a newbie because when I took over here I was backed up by an exceptional staff who have made their entire careers out of boat sales, maintenance and repairs. These guys have always been on the service side of the desk.
It’s my intention to leverage those decades of experience of the staff here at Wolcott Marine, to get you (and yes sometimes still me), the answers we need to our various and many maintenance, service and repair conundrum. So once a month I’ll bring a new topic to the staff here on various aspects of boat maintenance. We’ll distill down to the best advice and then I’ll offer that advice to you the loyal readers of Coastal Angler.
What I do know is that a boat that is well cared for and properly used can be a source of happiness for ourselves, friends and family. And a boat uncared for can be a huge source of anxiety and frustrations and cost. So, I promise to do my part to guide all of us on the proper level of care that assures plenty of happiness on the water.