Inspect your fuel fill hose!!

Somedays you get lucky breaks, some days you get unlucky breaks, somedays you win the lotto and don’t even know it!

One winter day, my mechanic and myself were out winterizing boats, just like most winter work days at Lake of the Ozarks. We offer many services other than straight winterize, such as, fuel filter replacement, add fuel stabilizer etc. Thankfully, this customer selected the add fuel stabilizer box on the winterize form. As we start the process of uncovering the boat, energizing the batteries, getting the hatch up…all the things necessary to be able to start the winterize process…I grab a fuel stabilizer from the truck to dump in the tank. Luckily, my mechanic was up in the boat while i approached the fuel cap to add the stabilizer. I start pouring in the stabilizer and my mechanic hears someting dripping, checks it out, and the stabilizer was pouring into the bilge. He yells out to me to stop and start to investigate…

As we luckily found dumping the stabilizer in, the boats fuel fill hose had deteriorated to the point of actively leaking. Let’s just say, if the customer hadn’t selected the “add fuel stabilizer” box on the winterize form…in the spring when he went to fuel up the boat, the gasoline would have been dropping directly into the bilge…which can lead to a big boom.

This is a valuable lesson, and could have led to a massive disaster…as it has been said for a long time….sometimes its better to be lucky than good!