Depending on the Kindness of Strangers
Posted by Pete Robbins on Aug 9th 2020
I’ve been struggling with marine electronics issues for most of 2020. I have Helix 12 units that can do everything short of sending a man to the moon, but unfortunately the one on my console had stopped reading depth in less than 4 feet of water – which those of you who’ve fished the Potomac know that’s where I spend most of the summer. I’m not necessarily afraid of hitting something as much as not being able to decipher the existing grass or find new growth.
My local marine dealer has been great. The folks at Humminbird have been great, especially their uber-patient tech support staff. Unfortunately, they just have a flowchart of potential problems and potential solutions and they can’t be on the water with me to bear witness to what’s going on. As a decidedly non-technical angler, this was a problem.
After living with this for nearly 6 months, I was at the end of my wits when a friend at the dealership suggested that I contact “Wayne P” who just about runs the Humminbird board on Bass Boat Central. In fact, if you look over the board’s history, you’ll see that not only is he remarkably patient and informed, but also that he appears never to sleep. His responses are virtually non-stop.
Noting that he lives only about 2 hours from me, I reached out with a private message to him asking about “House Calls” – at what price would he meet me on the water, and when would he have time? He responded that he was free the next day, or during the subsequent week. We set up a date for the following Saturday and he met me at Lake Anna on a drizzly morning. In about 90 minutes he managed not only to diagnose my problem and suggest a solution (complete with parts numbers, places to get them and hyper-specific installation instructions), but he also taught me more about how electronics work than I’ve learned in the past 24 years of boat ownership. Moreover, he refused to take any money – not even for his gas or lunch – for the effort.
“I just like to help people,” he said. “I enjoy figuring out solutions to their problems. It’s a challenge.”
Of course I’m thrilled that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and that I may once again be able to read shallow water depths, but the enduring lesson to me is that in a time of national crisis, when selfishness and hyper-partisanship often seem to dominate, there are still generous, kind-hearted, helpful people like Wayne Purdum. It reminded me that I need to pay that forward more often.
