Car Full of Engines

April 21 - 27, 2008

Sunday, April 27, 2008 - Vero Beach Municipal Marina, Vero Beach, FL
By Tom

This week was pretty quiet and we mostly stayed close to the boat and did odd jobs to start and get things squared away on the mother ship. We even braved public transportation several times to go out to the grocery store and then on to Walmart.

The highlight of the early part of the week was going to Pet Smart and visiting with their three brand new baby ferrets. No, we did not add any new crew members to the roster, but we did spend 4 hours over two days playing and making friends with said weasels.

Anyhow, we rented a car for this past weekend. Enterprise Rent-a-Car has an $18 a day deal if you take the car over the weekend. Of course they then try to sell you their own insurance coverage for that time period at the meager cost of $128.50, but we declined.

Once armed with our car, we proceeded south 140 miles to Miami. We have never been here before, so it was somewhat of an eye opener. We came to Miami to hook up with Mannie who we met over the internet. He had acquired a Mercury 3.3 outboard by way of some dubious enterprise, but being a true believer in the free market economy, I wasn't concerned. Mannie said that the engine was in great shape and ran well and that he would sell it to us for $400 cash with no warranty, no questions and no receipt.

Nice.

I haven't mentioned it before, but we decided while down in the Ragged's that we'd like to have a super small, two stroke outboard as a back up to the 15 hp Mercury. The smaller engine would primarily be used in locations where we don't need to travel great distance to get to shore or where we aren't going spear fishing. It probably sounds a little weird to need two outboards, but then again, you probably have more cars in your family then you do licensed drivers, so there.

Anyhow, after dodging two police crime scene blockades and one river bank body recovery, we finally got to Mannie's place in the downtown ghetto. I called him on my new disposable phone and he said he was running fifteen minutes late, so we sat in the rental car with the engine running, the doors locked and the EPIRB in hand and ready for deployment.

While waiting, six cop cars came screaming in to Mannie's block and proceeded to set up a barricade around the warehouse across the street. A few minutes later, we saw an armed officer on the rooftop with a large, furry K-9 and a helicopter hovering overhead. I surmise that they were either sniffing for drugs or dead people.

By the way, how bad must that suck to be the dog that goes sniffing for dead people?

Anyhow, Mannie eventually showed up and he and I went in to his warehouse while Amy sat in the car with two 12 gauge flare guns cocked and ready to rock and roll. Mannie was pretty cool if somewhat un-prepared, but when he showed me the little outboard, he couldn't make it run.

After twenty minutes, I traced the problem to a bad coil and although Mannie said he'd get one overnighted to me, I was reluctant to buy a non-running engine. Mannie said he understood and he even had the decency to cover me from the warehouse porch with his Desert Eagle .45 as I crossed the street back to my rental.

We peeled out of the ghetto and back to the interstate without issue. Our next stop was Sailorman in Fort Lauderdale, some 25 miles to the north.

Sailorman is kind of a half way house for used marine hardware. There were a few good deals, but most of the stuff was way over priced. In a strange twist of fate, they had another Mercury 3.3, 2 stroke outboard listed for 700 bucks.

After twenty minutes of trying (successfully I might add) to get the thing to run and then some intense negotiations, we ended up buying said outboard for 450 bucks.

As an aside, the sales dude was a total pud and tried to give us this complete sob story about how the engine was being sold on consignment for a friend of his was just paralyzed in some sort of accident on the eve of his departure to go cruising.

Now, maybe there really was a friend, but I doubt it and even if there was, this bozo kept going on and on about how we needed to dig deep into our Christian souls and help out a fellow believer.

As long time readers will remember, I am probably not the right guy to break out the "Help a fellow Christian" routine on and I pretty much had to lay it out for sales boy. In the end I said "here's the money take it or leave it, you have thirty seconds to decide". He hemmed and hauled until we started for the door and then said ok.

The deal almost fell through when he presented us with a bill and the total was 500 bucks. When I questioned the price he said he had to add sales tax. I balked at this and asked how you can charge tax on something that is used and he said that it is Florida law. I explained to him that Tom law says no tax on previously experienced gear and after another threat of take it or leave it, we walked away with a new engine for 450 dollars.

We loaded our new addition into the trunk of our rental machine and proceeded northward to Stuart and Lentine Marine. Captain Lou, Lentine Marine's proprietor, had two new Yamaha 9.9's waiting for me and after 15 minutes and five thousand dollars, he had a couple of his guys help me load them into the rental.

With the car completely full of engines, we did a drive by at Walmart for a couple of cases of sodas and then we hit the ABC store for two cases of wine, one case of whiskey and a couple of assorted rum bottles. We figured that while we had wheels, we might as well stock up on bulky stuff.

By the time we were done, the car was so full, we couldn't close the trunk or one rear door, so we returned to the marina and our dinghy. It took three trips, but we got all of our purchases back to the mother ship and stowed in their upright seating positions.

Hopefully on Monday I will start the installation process for the new engines and before long we will have our new propulsion units online.

Sometime next week I will be flying home to see my family, renew my driver's license and then drive my motorcycle back down to Amy so that we have some sort of transportation available to us outside of the bus. Details are still being worked out, but stay tuned, there is more to follow.