I procrastinate in the way birds sing and fish swim and grass grows. It’s simply what I do.
And at no time is this personal flaw more apparent—or dangerous—than this time of year, when everyone who lives in my cold part of the country (and has at least half a brain in their head) knows they should winterize their boat and outboard before putting the rig to bed until spring.
Unfortunately, I find this process:
A) Intimidating to a mechanically-inept person like me
B) Tedious, dirty, and physically uncomfortable
C) Depressing (no more fishing on water that’s not a solid until spring)
Granted, this task has gotten a little easier since I was hooked up with an
E-Z Lube system last year. Rather than force lower unit grease into the motor by squeezing it out of one of the standard tubes, you fill the E-Z Lube reservoir up with a couple bottles worth of grease, pressurize the tank with a few pumps, and then stick the nozzle into the lower-unit fill hole.
Here’s the best part. Rather than spend the next 10 minutes on your hands and knees on the cold garage floor as you squeeze the grease out of those irritating tubes, you just depress the handle on the nozzle and the pressurized system sends grease flowing into the lower unit. It fills it in about 60 seconds, depending on the size of the motor.
It’s really handy, especially when you have multiple motors to prep for storage, as I do.
Easier though it may be, putting the boat away still feels like surrender.
To make my procrastination worse, I have several friends and relatives who’ve proudly never properly winterized a boat before putting it into storage. And every spring, they pull the boat out of the garage, dump it in the nearest lake, and the thing works like it never missed a beat.
These stories call to me like siren song.
“No, Ryan. Put off winterizing one more week—you might be able to go fishing. And besides, do you really want to do all that awful stuff when you could be doing anything else?”
So please, I beg you to scare the crap out of me. Horrify me with tales of epic outboard meltdowns so grave that I spring out of my stupor this weekend and get the ugly business over with.
My boat and outboard depend on it. -- Ryan