wheezy_e

The craziest thing happened today. Some of you know that I work on boat lifts, others maybe don't know what a boat lift is. Basically it's a machine that installs onto a dock & raises your boat above the water so it stays clean while you're not using it. This morning I go out to check out a lift that's leaking. It's in the down position (under water) with the boat tied up floating, so first thing is to get some air in the hoist & check the usual suspects for leaks. As I'm blowing it up I notice the boat sitting a little crooked. Not at all unusual if the hoist was bought second hand or the owner got a different boat than it was set up for, or it's just off centered. I start checking the air fittings as it's coming up, can't really check the valve until I cose it, can't get on top of the tanks until it's full which takes about 4 minutes for this one. So now it's full, I check the valve out, bingo that's where the leak is. Normally I'd go ahead & replace it with the boat up but I figure this won't take a whole hour (minimum bill) so maybe I'll take a look at his hull pads & adjust them for the new boat if that's what it needs. I can do the valve as the boat is lowering. So I look underneath & there's a turtle between the boat and one hull pad! Of course I immediately began lowering the hoist & tried to relieve a little weight while it was going down. It takes a little longer to lower than to raise, maybe 5 minutes. I was pretty upset because I really didn't think a turtle's shell would hold up to that kind of pressure. But whadda you know- it swam away as soon as the hoist dropped away from the boat which made me happy. Hopefully there wasn't any damage done.