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San Francisco Boat Works
Categories: Local Services, Boating [Edit]
Neighborhood: Potrero Hill835 Terry Francois St
San Francisco, CA 94158
(415) 626-3275
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
2 reviews for San Francisco Boat Works
Had a similar experience to Robert H here. My boat broke down as I was attempting to dock at The Ramp so I left it with them. They quickly diagnosed the problem and prescribed an entirely new outdrive. Uggh. I've since found that is their default practice - have the customer simply buy an entirely new part. It took about 3 weeks of phone calls and bad communication until I realized they hadn't even ordered the part. I had to reason and explain with the parts manager than...duh...the part isn't going to be shipped unless he actually orders it! So he did. 2 months of bad communication later, a part arrived. The Mercury dealer fitted it on a Sunday himself since it had taken so long to arrive. SFBW told me I was good to go, so I booked a slip for the following weekend. They didn't bother launching or testing the boat until Friday when they found that the new outdrive was broken - which ruined my plans of course for the last event of the summer. They ordered another outdrive and again the dealer came to fit it himself. This time I insisted they do a sea-trial before I needed the boat! When I picked it up, the boat was covered in oily fingerprints, the upholstery was irreversibly damaged from oily 'something' that had been sat on it (for months?), and the fiberglass had been cracked near the engine housing. The outdrive ran OK but they'd charged me for the installation labor when they didn't even do the work! The toilet became blocked that weekend so I took the boat back to them and asked them to fix the cracked fiberglass and unblock the toilet. They suggested that I put in a new toilet... sounds familiar? I had several bad conversations about simply wanting the toilet unblocked and they suggested I needed to replace several components on it instead. They had a week to work on it and told me it was unblocked. I went to pick up the boat Friday, and guess what... the toilet still doesn't work, and some of the snaps on the carpet had been broken.
I'm done with SF Boat Works. I'm going to pick up the boat today, drive it somewhere else to get the head fixed, and never go back. It's a real shame because the location is so convenient for me. They all seem nice enough and also showed sympathy for the huge inconvenience, but it ultimately boils down to bad management and careless engineers when you return a damaged boat and don't even mention it. Like I'm not going to notice!?
I would characterize SF Boatworks as competent boat yard, although my last visit there for haul-out and bottom job took over a week before they even give me an estimate. Then the repair took over 5-1/2 weeks because they were extremely short-handed at the time. The management felt a bit embarrassed about the time it took them to do the work, but hey that's 5-1/2 weeks out of my sailing time in the middle of the summer! In the end, the work was done competently, although we had some discussion on the charges. if they had communicated about the scheduling a little more pro-actively, I'd feel much better about using them again. At this point, I'm going to try another yard for my next haul out.
