Marine "Professionals"

[Figment]

We all know little local establishments that have some sort of community bulletin board, right? The hardware store, the lunch sandwich place.... some gas stations have the piece of plexiglass on the checkout counter with dozens of business cards on display beneath, etc.

Over the course of the past couple of weeks, I've noticed business cards for no less than ten guys running one-horse marine businesses. Eight of these are entirely oriented toward electronics installation.

Marine electronics installation? Really? How is that a business?
Who are these guys, and what makes them feel that they're so much more qualified than Average Joe Boater?
Furthermore, who hires these clowns? Who makes the impulse-purchase of a $2000 suite of electronics and then chickens out on the installation?
Is that kind of money really flying around out there unbeknownst to me?

If my local market weren't already so saturated, I'd invest $5 in business cards and pushpins and see what I could catch for myself.
Sigh. Another goldmine has passed me by.

[dasein668]

Well, giving the benefit of the doubt here...

Someone who really understands electronics and interfaces etc and could really make recommendations about SYSTEMS and then install them so they actually worked...

Based on my experience with people's computer literacy, I would expect many of them to have a very hard time getting the chartplotter to talk to the radar and interface them both with the laptop which is talking to the satellite weather....

[Tim]

Whether these business card-carrying folks are truly well qualified for their chosen business is its own issue. Time will tell (see below). It's easy to be in business by printing up business cards, and there will always be people, in any line of work, who will try to make this "easy money" on the side. It's not usually a match made in heaven.

However, with today's society full of people who are determined to be too busy to do anything themselves (gotta go to the office after all...), not to mention these same people's lack of skill and, more importantly, inclination to undertake a project of any magnitude, there is certainly a call for such business to exist.

I would hazard a guess that the vast bulk of people who make that impulse $2000+ electronics purchase (on "sale" at West Marine, surely) lack the skills, tools, and inclination to install the equipment (even though the installations are, as we know, quite straightforward). The people buying the most complex systems are the ones least likely to have the time or interest in installing them; their time, to them, is better spent earning the dough to pay someone to do it. I'm not trying to talk down on anyone here--just stating that the more disposable income one has, the more inclined they are to just pay someone else to do the work for them. These are often the type who buy expensive electronics.

Look around most boating centers and you'll see that true do-it-youselfers are less common than it might at first appear. There are lots of people doing their own work, but much of it tends to be simpler in nature, or on the cheap. The bigger and more expensive the boat, the less likely that the owner is doing most of the work. These, and probably many novice, first-time boaters, are the customers that these business cards seek.

I know plenty of people who would be inclined to hire that stuff out. I can't imagine it, but that's how it is. (And this is Maine, a state known for its independent streak...but then southern Maine isn't really that Maine-ish anymore.) Maybe they wouldn't choose the card from the lunch place, but they'd still hire out simple jobs, simply because they're not interested in learning or doing the skill themselves. They lack the tools, the know-how, and the inclination--and often are unable or unwilling to dedicate the time. Ours is a service-based community these days...there is less and less self-sufficiency. It's too bad, I think, but that's how things are going. One need only look at the proliferation of highly-priced full service boatyards to see how that is going. Brewer's pops immediately to mind (puke).

People like us can't imagine hiring out work like that, but those business card guys are only catering to what is clearly a growing segment of our population. A year from now, 7 of those 10 will probably be out of business or trying some other new venture. The marketplace always weeds out the quality from the jokers. In the meantime, there will doubtless be plenty of takers for their service (whether it's worth it or not).

I also agree with Nathan that certain highly-integrated systems might be of the sort that many people would tend to hire a specialist--perhaps partly because the task seems overwhelming, rather than being truly difficult. Now, those card guys might not be the right choice, but in concept, it's true that lots of people will be inclined to call in someone else.

Usually, these lunchroom businesses are some bozo who thinks he'll cash in on the latest trendy need, to make that extra buck. Occasionally, they actually are good at what they do and survive in the longer term.

[JonnyBoats]

In the vein of ?hiring out? without even taking the time to know how the job should be done or what is involved (e.g. ?just take care of it for me, I?m too busy to understand what should be done?), how about all the people out there who rely on a sea-tow membership and who have never taken the time to go to a safe boating course, much less put the proper safety gear aboard?

Years ago, my dad knew a prominent lawyer from Boston who commissioned and took delivery of sailboat in the mid 30 foot range. This was back in the 1950s and it was a brand new wooden boat. When they showed up here in Maine to sail it home their ?charts? were Texaco road maps that they intended to use to sail back to Mass!

[Figment]

It just irks me to see the market so chock full of fly-by-night operations. Some of them may be on the ball, but you just know that the bulk of them are making it up as they go along, giving the whole industry a bad name along the way.

Example.... Years ago my club started hiring Brownell to do haulouts and launches. They're consummate professionals, and to see them work is truly a thing of beauty. A glass of wine on the coachroof won't have spilled a drop from start to finish.
A few years later, the trailer thing caught on and a local guy bought a lighter-duty unit that could handle the smaller boats for a lot less than Brownell's price, and at least half of the club membership jumped at the chance to pinch a penny. These guys get what they pay for, however. It's truly painful to see vessels handled so crudely. One gets the impression that this guy got into boat hauling when he got tired of the excavation business.

Had the local guy been our first experience with trailer-hauling, we'd have a far less favorable impression of the practice in general. The whole notion of it would have been tainted.

Or perhaps this is just a hotbutton issue with me, as I've seen a lot of unlicensed uninsured inexperienced fly-by-night moving trucks on the road lately. ;P

[Tim]

No doubt, there are good and bad "professionals" in any line of work. I think that's why personal referrals are often so important. Depending on the size of the potential customer base, I still say that the marketplace will weed out the bad eggs soon enough (large customer bases take longer for this process to work). Of course, there'll be a new one each time too, but poor quality work or service doesn't get rewarded in the long run.

All any true professional in any field can do is offer quality service for a fair price and know that in the end, it will work out better that way. Let the fly by nights dig their own grave; usually, they're quite proficient at it.

[JonnyBoats]

There is no question that true professionals who do top quality work will prosper. Thinking just of my county (Lincoln) here in Maine, we have Lyman Morse, Hodgdon Yachts and Paul Luke among others. Without question, a sailboat from Lyman Morse or Hodgdon is first rate.

On the other hand if it had not be for people who said ?not everyone can afford the absolute best, lets see if we can?t mass produce a sailboat to meet a price-point that the market will bear? then there would be no Triton ;-)

Sometimes ?frozen snot? is good enough.

[Figment]

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and reverse my position on this one. hmmkay?

I stopped by the 'yard today and observed how my father, after dropping $1800 on a chartplotter, nickel-and-dimed his way through the installation. There might actually be bubble gum and/or duct tape holding something together behind that console.

I kinda wish he'd grabbed one of those cards off the bulletin board of the deli. The money would have been very well spent.

[Tim]

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and reverse my position on this one. hmmkay?

Ah, in the spirit of one of my favorite movies! hehe

[Figment]

Comedy Central has burned that one into our brains for all time!

In a similar vein, have you been watching The Office??
Very dark but very gooooood comedy.

[Tim]

In a similar vein, have you been watching The Office??

The original British show was certainly a blast, with the smarmy boss we termed "cringeworthy" for his painful exploits (it almost hurt to watch the embarrassment...). I have not seen the American version that's being aired now. If you've seen both versions, how does the new one stack up?

[Figment]

It doesn't.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they ran it through the hollywood filter a lot less than I thought they would. It's certainly the least-dumbed-down comedy out there. That's clearing a fairly low hurdle, however.

It doesn't have the razor-sharp edge of the original, but to be fair I must say that this holds it to an impossible standard. British humor is british humor. American humor is american humor. Example: British standup comic Eddie Izzard.
The man can play in Paris, in french, and be a big hit, but he's still struggling to find foothold with an american audience which by and large isn't accustomed to thinking before laughing.
We suck.

[Tim]

We suck.

Yeah, that about sums it up! hehe

Americans and their sound-bite attention spans..wait, what were we talking about, anyway?

[Figment]

Example.... Years ago my club started hiring Brownell to do haulouts and launches. They're consummate professionals, and to see them work is truly a thing of beauty. A glass of wine on the coachroof won't have spilled a drop from start to finish.
A few years later, the trailer thing caught on and a local guy bought a lighter-duty unit that could handle the smaller boats for a lot less than Brownell's price, and at least half of the club membership jumped at the chance to pinch a penny. These guys get what they pay for, however. It's truly painful to see vessels handled so crudely. One gets the impression that this guy got into boat hauling when he got tired of the excavation business.

It happened again. Today was haulout day.
Because a number of local marinas have instituted policies whereby if one doesn't do winter storage at their yard, they will not guarantee a slip for the following summer, fewer and fewer of my club's large-sailboat-owning members are hauling and storing at the club each winter. Only the true cheapskates (who, me?) remain.
Naturally, Brownell can't bring a mast crane all the way from Mattapoisett just to pull five masts at the normal rate. They declared that they'd need to charge $250 just to show up, and then charge the normal rate per foot per mast.

This rubbed the cheapskates the wrong way, of course. They called around and "found a guy" from a local marina who would bring the crane around to the club, and be cheaper than Brownell to boot. Yippee.

I thought I'd worked with some derelict and decrepit old equipment. Much of my equipment was obtained when my grandfather was running the biz. This guy's crane took us to school on the true meaning of "derelict and decrepit".
1) Before any hoisting had begun, he rolled a tire off its rim just backing the rig into position. That might've tipped us off.
2) He accidentally shut the rig down after positioning. We had to jump it back to life with the club's towtruck, sparks-a-flying.
3) Most marine-use cranes have a scrap of carpet or other padding wrapped around the hoist ball to prevent scratching stuff, right? When I voiced my concern about his unpadded ball, the operator took off his flannel shirt and electrical-taped it around the ball. Awesome. He also taped the safety-latch of the hook into the open position. Doubleawesome.
4) He showed up alone, expecting to operate the crane while we all scrambled around doing the rest of the rigging. The Brownell guys were appalled, and weren't about to let that happen while my boat was on their rig, so they jumped up and made it happen. Love those guys.
5) I'm fluent in the international language of crane operator hand signals. This operator is not. He required a shouting-relay of instructions. Everyone remember playing "telephone" at summer camp? Yeah, that bad.

So the Brownell guys took the initiative to help out with my mast. Then they and I took off down the road, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves with this mook. I returned 90min later to finish winterizing my mast. Only two other masts had been unstepped in that time and the whole gang was walking around with eyes like half-dollars. The two biggest sticks (including a 50' triple spreader monster) were still to come. Ugly. Uglyugly.

There are marine professionals, and then there are Marine Professionals.
Suffice to say that we'll split Brownell's $250 among the five of us in the spring.

[Jason K]

Down here in the Banana Republic, contracts go to some strange places, often leaving many greased palms in their wake. The contract for salvaging boats in and around my harbor has gone to a company called New Orleans Iron Works.

So, what do iron workers know about boats and marine salvage? Alarmingly little.

I was working on the Triton last week and I saw them drop a 57 Bertram Sportfisher at least 15 ft. where it crashed onto the edge of the salvage barge and rolled into the water.

I was telling the story at a club party that night and spoke with a friend who had his own story. They pulled his Pearson Flyer out and were going to set it on jackstands in the road. They swing it over the seawall and the same thing happened (either the strap slipped or broke) and the boat dropped to the street - destroyed.

Again, last night I was out there and they were moving a big Sea Ray that had blown into the club's dry storage lot onto a salvage barge. They couldn't figure out how to swing the boat to face the barge, so they tied a line from the prop shaft to the back of a truck. The truck took off and the boat swing HARD into the one of the two small cranes we have in our dry dock.

Once again, I'm thrilled the the Triton will be staying out of the clutches of our local variety of "marine professionals."

[Figment]

This might need clarification, or it might not. Regardless, several marine professionals participate in this board, and I'm not out to offend anyone, so I feel the need to clarify....

I'm not bashing marine professionals as a lot. My rant is more to the point that there are True Professionals who are worth every penny of their fee, and then there are a bunch of hacks who're trying to get a foothold in the business as a side gig, learning painful lessons at their customers' expense along the way.

We get what we pay for. How many times in my life will I need to re-learn that lesson?

[Tim]

The success or failure of any so-called professional, in the end, comes down to that individual's (or company's) reputation, prudence, honesty, and, finally, fees. Gold-plated pricing does not guarantee satisfactory results, and in fact may often lead to increased dissatisfaction thanks to unfufilled expectations. Some of the highest priced places around here actually provide the worst service, coupled with ridiculous nickel-diming on every little thing.

But it's nearly always true that someone hired for a job simply because they were cheap is going to lead to an generally unhappy experience, as your club members found out.

In the end, it's the reputation that matters most. Good reputations are built on proper experience for the tasks at hand, fair pricing, honest values, and delivering as advertised or promised.

BTW, I don't think anyone would be offended by your earlier post. It was clear of what you were speaking, and we've all been in a similar position at one time or another.

[FloatingMoneyPit]

In the recreational sector of an industry that was born out of and still depends so much on commercial industry, it's fascinating to see how many different non-marine trades just slap "marine" in the name and voila--"it's just like workin' them house sites, Elmer, but watch out for seagull poop". Except sailmaker, surveyor, rigger, and a few others, it seems like quite a few folks think they can fake it. Auto body guys doing fiberglass, lawnmower mechanics rebuilding A4s, electricians doing "expert" 12V, crane operators dropping boats and dimpling hulls on misplaced jackstands, etc. I had an out-of-work-electrician-turned-cashier at West Marine try to sell me his expertise in re-wiring my boat at $100/hr. The panel diagram he drew was a joke. Next time, bud.
A conscientious non-marine professional can sometimes do a kick-ass job, but isn't it nice when you know you've got a boater at the controls?
Perhaps crane ops and others should have certifications like a marine surveyor. Are there ABYC standards for boatyard management?