An Un(sea)Wise Purchase
For all its considerable advantages, the Carver 506 motor yacht has one big drawback: no practical place to put a reasonable-sized dinghy. The foredeck is too small, and the cabin top over the aft "sun" deck is too high. Although one 506 owner actually put a 10-foot dinghy and hoist way up there, the thought of maneuvering all that mass in rolling seas, nearly 20 feet up, gave us pause.
It was thus with some excitement that we encountered Sea Wise Marine's davit system, advertised for "your yacht 30 to 60 feet." Sea Wise mounts the dinghy on the aft end of the swim platform, flipped on its side, by capturing clamps cemented to one tube of the dinghy. A hydraulic hoist then lifts the opposite side of the dingy up and away from the water, and towards the transom. An articulating motor mount acts as a hinge, and keeps the outboard motor level at all times. Slick, or so we thought.
Our $7,000 SeaWise installation lasted 36 hours in service. Between Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., the first leg of our ferry trip to San Francisco, a welded stainless steel support rod sheared from its support, and rendered the davits useless. This, after less than four months of shakedown on the typically-smooth Straits of Georgia.
At any other time, this would have been a frustrating inconvenience. But we were counting on the dinghy as our “lifeboat” on the long trip at sea, and, and after months of preparation, we had a tight schedule. One crew member actually flew in from Florida for the trip, and our hired “delivery captain” had a narrow window of time. To say we were put out, was an understatement.
Urgent calls to the Sea Wise dealer finally (it was Saturday) got us in touch with the owner and president of Sea Wise, Stuart Colby. Now Stuart had a chance to preserve the perfect record we have had over 30 years in dealings with Canadians and Canadian companies — absolute courtesy, a total service orientation, immediate response, and a "can do" attitude. He failed; in the first 3 minutes of the phone call he wiped out 30 years of accumulated goodwill. In terminal frustration, we finally resorted to an ultimatum, delivered at 120 dB: "We will return immediately across the Straits of Georgia to any mainland port convenient to your Delta, B.C. factory, and you will arrive with a trailer, take the dinghy, re-engineer and repair the broken brackets, and return the dinghy to us in two days."
We also arranged with the dealer to have an inflatable repair guy to meet us at the same port to re-glue one of Stuart's two latch pads to the sponson; it ripped loose when the bracket failed.
Towing the dinghy on a 150' bridle, we slogged in heavy weather 55 nm back across the Straits and up the Fraser River to the arranged meeting point — the Shelter Island Marina, in Delta, B.C. The glue guy was on time, and did his thing. Colby later showed up with a trailer, and took the dinghy away. The bad news, however, was that the re-engineering and repair would take several days. We elected to abandon the dinghy, acquire a loaner 4-man life raft, and continue with our ferry trip to San Francisco, which we did, the following Wednesday, two days behind schedule.
Because we arrived in San Francisco without the dinghy, we had to arrange for it to be transported there separately. In addition to the frustration, the total cost of this fiasco was: $650 for fuel (round trip from Victoria to Delta, B.C.), $800 for a dinghy trailer, $150 for a customs broker, $500 to a driver, $150 to air freight a borrowed life raft back to Vancouver, and $150 for a Victoria hotel for guests whom we cast ashore prematurely to rush back to the mainland. Total cost: $2,400, or 34% of the original cost of the davit system.
For an under-engineered product, a bad weld, and a bad attitude, we give Sea Wise an "F-". I know, I know; the scale only goes to "F". But this was special. As it turns out, Sea Wise later got a "Z" (see: Sea Wise Bites [the Dust], May 29, 2004), but this is enough for now. The re-engineered bracket, by the way, was substantially better in design and construction — the way it should have been originally.
It was thus with some excitement that we encountered Sea Wise Marine's davit system, advertised for "your yacht 30 to 60 feet." Sea Wise mounts the dinghy on the aft end of the swim platform, flipped on its side, by capturing clamps cemented to one tube of the dinghy. A hydraulic hoist then lifts the opposite side of the dingy up and away from the water, and towards the transom. An articulating motor mount acts as a hinge, and keeps the outboard motor level at all times. Slick, or so we thought.Our $7,000 SeaWise installation lasted 36 hours in service. Between Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., the first leg of our ferry trip to San Francisco, a welded stainless steel support rod sheared from its support, and rendered the davits useless. This, after less than four months of shakedown on the typically-smooth Straits of Georgia.
At any other time, this would have been a frustrating inconvenience. But we were counting on the dinghy as our “lifeboat” on the long trip at sea, and, and after months of preparation, we had a tight schedule. One crew member actually flew in from Florida for the trip, and our hired “delivery captain” had a narrow window of time. To say we were put out, was an understatement.
Urgent calls to the Sea Wise dealer finally (it was Saturday) got us in touch with the owner and president of Sea Wise, Stuart Colby. Now Stuart had a chance to preserve the perfect record we have had over 30 years in dealings with Canadians and Canadian companies — absolute courtesy, a total service orientation, immediate response, and a "can do" attitude. He failed; in the first 3 minutes of the phone call he wiped out 30 years of accumulated goodwill. In terminal frustration, we finally resorted to an ultimatum, delivered at 120 dB: "We will return immediately across the Straits of Georgia to any mainland port convenient to your Delta, B.C. factory, and you will arrive with a trailer, take the dinghy, re-engineer and repair the broken brackets, and return the dinghy to us in two days."
We also arranged with the dealer to have an inflatable repair guy to meet us at the same port to re-glue one of Stuart's two latch pads to the sponson; it ripped loose when the bracket failed.
Towing the dinghy on a 150' bridle, we slogged in heavy weather 55 nm back across the Straits and up the Fraser River to the arranged meeting point — the Shelter Island Marina, in Delta, B.C. The glue guy was on time, and did his thing. Colby later showed up with a trailer, and took the dinghy away. The bad news, however, was that the re-engineering and repair would take several days. We elected to abandon the dinghy, acquire a loaner 4-man life raft, and continue with our ferry trip to San Francisco, which we did, the following Wednesday, two days behind schedule.
Because we arrived in San Francisco without the dinghy, we had to arrange for it to be transported there separately. In addition to the frustration, the total cost of this fiasco was: $650 for fuel (round trip from Victoria to Delta, B.C.), $800 for a dinghy trailer, $150 for a customs broker, $500 to a driver, $150 to air freight a borrowed life raft back to Vancouver, and $150 for a Victoria hotel for guests whom we cast ashore prematurely to rush back to the mainland. Total cost: $2,400, or 34% of the original cost of the davit system.
For an under-engineered product, a bad weld, and a bad attitude, we give Sea Wise an "F-". I know, I know; the scale only goes to "F". But this was special. As it turns out, Sea Wise later got a "Z" (see: Sea Wise Bites [the Dust], May 29, 2004), but this is enough for now. The re-engineered bracket, by the way, was substantially better in design and construction — the way it should have been originally.
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