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Mac Boring
Great Bay Marine
The Purchase
Living in the "Live Tax Free or Die" state of New Hampshire gives me a small advantage when making large purchases, no sales tax (no
income tax either - eat your hearts out if you live in the other lower 48 states). This only works if I make my purchases in the state
though. I found an in-state dealer, Great Bay Marine in Newington, New Hampshire. The staff at Great Bay was very pleasant to deal
with and eager to help. Their knowledge of the Yanmar engine I purchased was very limited however. I usually worked with Tom
Brown, their sales representative. He was very pleasant to deal with and made every attempt to find answers to my questions. I
consulted Mac Boring, the regional distributor, for most of my technical questions. My experience with them is mixed. If I could reach
Jere Russo, I usually got a correct answer. Although everyone else was very polite, they usually didn't have a correct answer for my
questions.

Payment had to be made up-front. I was a little nervous about sending such a large check out. Great Bay has been in business for years
and has a good reputation, so I had a very low risk of funds getting lost. It took about three weeks after payment for Great Bay to
receive the engine from Mac Boring. I'm sure that they would have been happy to ship or deliver the engine from there for a fair
price. They are only about 90 minutes from my home, so I picked the engine up myself. An engine like this isn't something that you can
just pick up and move about without some forethought. I have a small utility trailer that I use for moving stuff like this, so I had part
of the problem already solved. The engine comes mounted on a steel frame that is bolted to a wooden pallet and covered in a
wooden crate. Great Bay has a forklift that they used to load the engine onto my trailer. Tie-down straps insured that the load
wouldn't slide off the trailer during the trip home.


The engine has a pair of lift-rings on the top, between which I hackled a short section of chain. I have a strong eye-bolt installed in a
support beam in my garage. Using a cable-winch attached to this ring on one end and to the chain on the other, I lifted the engine
from the utility trailer. I'm not sure a pickup truck would have worked because the bed would have been too high. To lift the engine,
you need about six feet from the top of the trailer to the lifting eye. I had about seven feet from the floor to the lift ring. Another
way to move heavy objects such as this is to put refrigerator rollers under the pallet and roll the item on and off. The cable winch is
easier to work with, but takes care to avoid dropping the load by accident.

I made a wooden dolly with heavy-duty casters. After lifting the engine, I moved the trailer out of the way and slid the dolly in under
the engine pallet. This made moving the engine around easy once the trailer was unloaded. There was still much work to be done on
the engine, so having the ability to move it out of the way was important.