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Boatyard Tales
The Roving Mechanic
BY CAPT. BILL PIKE
Y
ikes,” I said when I read the weather report. It seemed that the fol-
lowing day, during which I was going to get together with a me-
chanic on board the Betty Jane II, would feature wind, wind, and
more wind. “Gusts,” the report said, “between 30 and 35 knots.”
Yikes, indeed! While owning my previous boat (a Grand Banks
trawler with a single engine and no bow thruster), I’d gotten pretty good
at docking her. In fact, if given suffi cient time to formulate a decent
plan, I could deal with just about anything.
But the Betty Jane II? Although she sports the same single-engine-
no-thruster confi guration, she’s a totally diff erent kettle of fi sh. For
one thing, her displacement is radically less—she’s a comparative
featherweight. And for another, she has more relative sail area—so in a
signifi cant breeze (to say nothing of wind, wind, and more wind) she’s
a freakin’ handful. And fi nally, because I’ve devoted so much time to
Betty’s total refi t, docking practice has been limited.I was a tad early for my meeting with Bob Galloway,
a renowned mechanic who travels the country trouble-
shooting for Yanmar distributor Mastry Marine Center
in St. Petersburg, Florida. And I was also a tad nervous,
fi guring Bob would want me to immediately crank Betty’s
240-horsepower 4LHA-STP and head out for a sea trial so
he could diagnose my mysterious fuel leak. As I waited, I
formulated a rogue’s gallery of strategies for getting into the
slip aft erwards, each featuring a pranged swim platform.
“Hi, I’m Galloway,” said Bob, pulling into the marina
parking lot at last. He was leaning out of the window of a
new truck with Mastry’s logo on the side. “Let’s talk.”
Th en without mentioning a sea trial or much of anything
else he got down from the truck and initiated an inquiry
that was a lot like an interview with a doctor. It lasted 20
minutes and brought to light absolutely everything I could
suggest, remember, or imagine about my Yanmar.
“Now,” Bob said at the end. “Let’s take a look.”
Th e stroll to the boat was wild. Instead of a dock cart full
of equipment, Bob hauled only a simple array of com-
mon tools—wrenches mostly—in a small, stand-up canvas
satchel. When I remarked on this, adding that I had lots of
tools on board, he replied, “Th anks, but I can rebuild an
engine with what’s in this bag, or at least come close.”
Once we’d boarded Betty and removed her engine hatch,
it soon became clear that Bob was not into an engine
start-up, let alone a sea trial. Instead, he nixed my off er of a
droplight (“I work better in the dark,” he joked), extracted a
small, fl ex-head fl ashlight from his bag, and began examin-
ing my engine like he was Sherlock Holmes.
“Here’s your fuel leak,” he said aft er a bit, tapping the
bleed screw atop the engine’s fuel/water separator. Fuel was
leaking invisibly from around it, Bob posited, fi lming down
the sides of the canister and, via underlying hoses and
wires, pooling in the engine pan at some remove.
He tightened the screw, then spent another two hours
poking and prodding. “I learned diesel mechanics in the
Navy,” he noted at one point, “and eventually became the
chief mechanic on what they called ‘the admiral’s barge’ on
board the USS Saratoga.” Aft er that, he said he’d worked for
a couple of engine and boat companies before Mastry.
“Amazing,” I observed as Bob and I stood in Betty’s
saloon listening to the Yanmar purr, aft er he’d fi nally given
me the go-ahead to crank ’er up. “All you needed here was
a few tools and a fl ashlight. No sea trial. No engine startup,
except at the bitter end.”
“Yeah,” Bob replied with a smile. “Who wants to deal
with a lot of engine heat? And besides, it’s a little windy
today for a boat ride.”