Demand Letter Sent

This is the day the Demand Letter was sent to the Tartan dealer, Fairport Yachts and Yanmar USA.

What Every Reader Should Know

Every reader should know that getting to 5/21/07 with this boat has been far from easy. My wife would say and I would have to somewhat agree "It's been a nightmare". The boat was self commissioned by my wife and I through 2006 and it was a very ugly process to discover the build issues.

Ongoing legal action against Fairport Yachts prevents me from listing all the issues, but suffice it to say several were life endangering and almost everything was related to the poor quality of construction. We're not talking small things and oversights, we are talking major discoveries.

My wife and I believed that we were through the major items of repair and correct installation and were looking forward to 2007 being the year that we would finally get MAKO to be our Texas cruising platform. Memorial Day was to be the first of three multi-day passages along the coast. We were intending being the Harvest Moon Regatta for the first time in 3 years.

Emergency Haul Out

My thanks to Tow-BoatUS and the good people at the yard for understanding the issues and the need to immediately haul and block my boat. They understood the EPA issues and knew I responded as fast as I possibly could from Sunday PM to Monday AM.

By 2PM the boat was on the hard. Unable to be in the water because of the oil that was somehow being forced from the saildrive the hard is the only place the boat can be to avoid fines. However, the thought that MAKO would have to be on the hard during the 2007 hurricane season filled us with dread.

With the boat on the hard and the awful destruction of the sail drive in front of all on land, the investigation and analysis began to understand why this boat was losing sail drives at the rate of one per year. So began the discussions with the dealer, Tartan and of course Yanmar.

What a Discovery

It was a nice Sunday afternoon a week before Memorial Day weekend. We were having a nice family weekend getting the boat ready for a Memorial Day passage to Freeport and Offats Bayou.

It was while cleaning the Flag Blue AwlGrip topsides that my son noticed the small pools of oil on the surface next to our dinghy. We were seeing oil come from under out boat! They kept coming!

It was a little over 12 months ago I had seen the same thing happen - the day I completed the transaction with the dealer and purchased the boat. The oil was coming from the 'new' saildrive! I knew it then and there.

Within 30 minutes I had the diver on site. The same diver that had been diving on our boats for over 5 years and who had completed every zinc change on MAKO during the past year and a bit. He was kind enough to respond and break in to his Sunday afternoon. His report was damning.

So began the most recent saga of the ownership on MAKO.

Welcome to the Blog for MAKO 3700

This is the blog for a Tartan 3700 called MAKO. A lovely example of a beautifully designed boat by the ever talented Tim Jackett.

The blog is the chronology of the events and goings on between MAKO's owners and the manufacturer, Fairport Yachts following the discovery in May 2007 that we had 'lost' our second Yanmar Saildrive in 2 years.

The focus is not on the specifics of the issues we have had with the boat, but rather the timetable of events following the discoveries and having to immediately take the boat from the water to its current resting place on the hard at a Texas boat yard.