Some businesses, and or the employees, just do not get the meaning of “Service.” When doing my run around Portland to Freeport just after the last issue was printed, I rounded the corner on Route 1 to head down to South Freeport Marine and Strout’s Point Wharf Co. and there in the street someone had lost a number of pieces of demolition debris. I made sure I missed the two or three porch pillars, but I failed to see the smaller pieces. When you hit something in the road and you think you might have a tire issue, just turn to the inside tire pressure screen. I did that and continued on, but it was quickly evident that the left rear tire was losing pressure. So, I went to a tire company in Yarmouth and asked the person behind the counter when he could look at a tire that needed to be repaired. He said “Saturday.” This is a 15-minute job and waiting two days 120 miles from home was not an option. He could not have cared less. So, I headed to my last drop off and asked them where I could get a tire changed. The person said, “Oh, we can do that!” In no time they had the tire off, plugged and back on and I was on my way home.
When your vehicle is how you do business, you need great service. I have dealt with Bangor Tire for over 40 years, and they do their best to keep me on the streets, but unfortunately, most of my issues are more in depth than they do. I am not impressed with dealerships as they could care less if you need the vehicle for work or not. It should all come down to knowing your customers and service. They have computers and could easily add information to better help serve their customers. When someone calls Jonesport Shipyard they do their best to take care of them no matter if they are pleasure or commercial. However, commercial boats will take priority as this is how they make their living and for the most part the pleasure boaters have been understanding.
I am also getting less and less impressed with the new vehicles. It is like almost everything made today, they are built as cheaply as possible and only last a fraction of the time of the older ones. If you think there is a climate problem, then why has there not been a ruling in Washington making them build quality products? Three years ago, I purchased a GMC pickup powered with a small turbo Diesel and to date it has logged over 157,000 miles. It has been a good truck getting almost 28 mpg per gallon. Some car manufacturers have stopped putting diesels in their vehicles, which makes you wonder why. I just wonder what I should be doing for preventative maintenance before I have a problem, and I am stuck without a vehicle for a week or two. These things are full of sensors and when one goes your speed could drop to 3 mph until you fix it. Right now, I have a coolant senor issue, which takes 4.5 hours to replace and was fortunate to get an appointment with a GMC dealer within a week of calling. Let us see how they do for service.
I am not sure service will ever be like it was. Society has a poor attitude toward service and customers in general. For what they get paid, they should be jumping with joy to serve you. They should want to make you feel good so you want to continue doing business with them, but most could care less.
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To me the conclusion of summer comes with the Newport International Boat Show in Newport, Rhode Island, which takes place in the middle of September. I did my usual run to the Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut and only came out with two boxes of books. The next morning, I made my way to Newport to get the Maine Built Boats booth set up, which usually does not take more than an hour to accomplish.
In looking around I felt there were not as many people floating around the town, but it was Wednesday and the show did not start until the following day. With questions about the economy one always has to wonder if the people would come or stay home and save their pennies. After setting up the booth I walked around the show and it seemed bigger. There were lots of in the water boats, albeit mostly centre consoles. and plenty of booths in the tents.
Before the show started, I ran over to Commonwealth Books, a great used bookstore in Newport, which is only opened Thursday to Sunday. I got four great books on British naval history and looked at some of their rare books, which were fascinating, but I refrained.
The first two days of the show are usually when you see your serious customers and I saw a number in the booth. I had questions on new boats, service work and then general Maine questions. What I did notice was that the docks did not seem all that busy, but that might have been poor timing or just where I was looking. Saturday and Sunday are always busy days and everywhere there were plenty of people wandering around Saturday, but unfortunately, on Sunday we had rain for the first couple of hours, and the crowd was lighter than usual.
After the show I talked with several people, and they stated that they had a good show with good prospects. Everyone I talked with seemed pleased. This is not a cheap show to do. When you add up all the costs of having a simple booth, hotel, and food you will probably spend about $5,000. To justify this expense, you need to have made some good contacts that turn into sales. However, if you are not there, they may think you are no longer in business. I am seriously considering going next year with Holland Boat. When you are surrounded by a sea of centre console boats, a Holland 32 would certainly stand out.
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I have been trying to get more reading in, and it ends up being a juggling act between that and doing what I should really be doing. While in Newport I finished a book on the Royal Navy’s SOVEREIGN OF THE SEA. It was a great overview on the evolution of warship design as related to the Royal Navy and other continental powers during the Tudor period. When I finished that I started reading the series on the History of Civilization and chose to begin with the Age of Voltaire. I thought this could be really dry reading, but actually it is enjoyable, but it is long, over 800 pages. I got about 125 pages read when I got side-tracked and started another book on crime and punishment aboard naval vessels in the 1800s. People who think they have it rough should have lived back then. They would probably never complain again.
During the summer, my research sort of gets overridden by everything else that has a greater priority. I have been working on entering more vessels from the List of Merchant Vessel of the United States (MVUS) for 1989, of which there are 197,000 entries. Getting this entered into my vessel database will give it more recently built vessels and make the database much more useful. Unfortunately, it is going to take a few years to complete.
I have also begun adding information from my database on merchant sailing vessels for 1867-1885. Some of these ended their careers before 1885 and I am adding their information to the database. That means I need to complete entering all the sailing vessels in MVUS up to 1940 when all types of vessels were combined into one section and then add those to the big vessel database.
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Last year on the first Saturday in October the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport hosted Sardinefest. They had no idea how this would be received and thought if they had 250 people show up, they would be pleased. Well, they had about 1,250 come and it was obvious that they needed to do it again this year. They promoted it with signs and social media, brought in vendors and again the people came. I am betting that they had over 2,000 attendees. Everybody was having a good time. They even sold out of sardines before the clock struck 12:00. I am sure that this is going to be a yearly event as it really helps the Museum and others in the town. If you did not make the first two, make sure you come next year!
