Joe decided we needed a new dinghy and so he bought one. Then he found a good deal on a new motor so we bought that too.
I was there when they delivered it and watched Joe start it up, thinking to myself – that’s a good idea – we should make sure it works.
Shortly thereafter, Joe, being a good mechanical engineer, realized that they had delivered a two-stroke engine rather than a 4-stroke engine. I’m a little fuzzy on what this means but apparently you can’t tell from the outside. He went to the shop to straighten it out and the guy told him he could only return it if he hadn’t started it. Ugh.
The shop was supposed to sell our old motor for us but now Joe didn’t trust them. They wouldn’t take back the new motor and we still didn’t have a motor we wanted. So we bought a third one from the same guy. He did give us a good deal – I think he felt a little bad.
Somewhere in this whole process, when we had taken the original motor off the dinghy in anticipation of the first new one (we didn’t know there was a second one), an acquaintance saw the dinghy waiting by the dock and asked if he could borrow it to take out a crew of divers to help him look for the drone he had lost. He didn’t notice that the motor was no longer on the dinghy.
Joe, being the kind soul that he is, didn’t point out that three of us had just removed the motor. We put it back on and he went on his mission (and failed to find the drone), brought the dinghy back and we took the motor off again.
All told, I think Joe moved various motors at least 10 times that day. And each was heavier than the one before.
The delivery guy said his boss couldn’t take it back because, once it was started, no one would buy it. I asked about selling it “used” but the delivery guy told me that no one would believe it had only been started once and wouldn’t pay anything close to what it cost.
We went back and forth with phone calls and visits with the boss, the delivery guy, the boss’ wife, some random American friend of the boss’, the credit card company, etc. The boss wasn’t very nice and yelled and threatened and then left town.
So, an unfortunate miscommunication led us to spending an entire day moving dinghy motors back and forth and wasting time and energy. Oddly, we now have one dinghy and three motors. Joe gave the old dinghy to a nice man in Shelter Bay. If you know anyone that needs a dinghy motor in the Galapagos, be sure to let us know!