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Originally Posted by Solent Ranger
So does the same apply for those that join the AA, RAC or Greenflag?
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I can think of a few occasions that I've either started a journey or carried on with a journey where I had an engine issue knowing if I 'died' I'd be OK because I could call the men in yellow/orange/green depending who I was with at the time. I don't **think** I've consciously or unconsciously skimped on maintenance. Some examples:
Travelling 250mile journey to visit family. About 60miles in stopped for fuel. Dark rainy night. Car wouldn't restart. Britannia called, attended restarted but told me alternator was dodgy (I'd had to replace a belt a few weeks before so it didn't seem too crazy a possibility that the belt had failed because alt was failing. He promised the belt was as tight as possible). He said carry on (I only had local recovery at the time), don't turn the engine off and if it fails again call us back and we will probably have to recover to a garage and get new alternator next day. The safest thing to do would either have been to find a hotel near there and sort it in the morning or to go back home (60 miles instead of 190miles) and sort once home. I pressed on. 50miles later it failed while driving and I lost all lights on the M74 in driving rain in pitch black. That was dangerous! Had to stop as hard shoulder was conned off so couldn't crawl to a services along hard shoulder. Recovered to garage - he actually fixed it (belt had stretched, alt was fine). That one strikes me most as being the kind of thing that can go wrong with boats and do you stay in a distant marina or press on home. This was before it was trendy to get out the car, stand behind the barrier etc on the hard-shoulder. I can tell you I had no plans on staying in the car with no lights on it.
Another time I put about 10litres of petrol in a diesel before spotting that both pump handles were green and I'd picked up the wrong one. My cover didn't cover wrong fuelling so I decided to top it off with diesel and risk it. Got away with it, but did it in the knowledge I had cover that would take it to a garage for me if need be.
And the other time I can think of is when I had an ECU fault. Lots of trial and error fixing attempts. It was one of those faults that needed the engine hot, and it would just drop to limp home mode. I drove it like that for 3 weeks and went to limp a few times. But I knew if it died completely I could get recovered.
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Most who go to sea don't take risks! Those that do, don't join!
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But I don't think that applies on the road - does it?
Yes the complete numpties who drive without insurance, tax, MOT etc probably don't shell out to green flag either.
But I suspect most people have some plan of who they call if something breaks.
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Just recently I had a couple who wanted to do a PB2 course, they bought a boat, never tested it or even ran it up prior to bringing it down and guess what? It didn't work.
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Well if you've not worked out that you can run it in a bucket then you assume you need to test it in water so take it to the sea. Apart from blocking the slipway if you never get it started what harm does it do. My first car was bought from Auction. £330 well spent on a Fiat Panda. I could see the engine ran. I couldn't drive it myself, I had no idea if brakes or anything other than first gear worked.
I didn't take out breakdown cover for it until about a month later because I was only driving it in my local city on 30MPH roads and if it broke I'd get a bus like I had for the 20 years before, and get my dad who is a mechanical engineer to come and take a look at it. When I started doing 100miles on Motorway I got cover.
I want to stress - I'm not knocking Sea Start. If I was on the South Coast I may well have cover. I just wonder what it does to the Psyche of the boat owner in terms of faults they will accept when going out. Also curious what happens when they get a fault 6miles out. While RNLI would never be my preferred option in a minor tech fault, it feels like they have fuller cover both around the coast and distance off shore. So would I be better putting my money there, and have a small aux? I realise that wont get me started when leaving marina etc... and I wont leave on aux alone.
spy-sea-one
Darwin
