VI Standpoint.com: Firewood salesman turned Top Notch Mechanic

Firewood salesman turned Top Notch Mechanic
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GARY ELEAZAR on 26/08/2011 09:31:00

There aren’t many Eskimos that can regularly prepare a ‘mean-steak’ on the
grill in the outdoors and finding a capable efficient mechanic for outboard
engines in Texas is just as rare. However, rare does not mean impossible.

With not much formal training in the profession, Chuck Steely has managed to
elevate himself from a firewood salesman in a small town in South East, Texas,
to one of the Virgin Islands’ premier mechanics working on outboard engines
for boats, both large and small.
A mechanic by trade is not an easy task and takes a special breed of person to
develop the necessary aptitude, but according to Steely, where he comes from
just about everybody works on their machinery at some point in their lives.
Be that as it may, it is no surprise that while Steely was plying his trade as a
young man selling firewood and got the opportunity to be trained by someone in
the fine art, which is synonymous with ‘grease monkey,’ he jumped at it.
Steely first worked with the Nissan Dealership for a few months before a friend
offered to school him in the BMW brand, which he did for about five years.
Shortly after this, Chuck, as he is fondly called, got the opportunity to travel
to the Virgin Islands and was in St. Thomas for just about 20 years from around
1989.
When he arrived in the Virgin Islands, the dealership that he was supposed to be
employed at was no longer in existence and so it was time for Chuck to adapt.
The Virgin Islands is known to be the “sailing capital of the world,” so it
was not a difficult transition for Chuck to move from cars to boats, but there
are two distinct differences that he has had to grapple with. During an
interview with this newspaper, Chuck said that one peculiar thing about working
with cars has to do with location.
“With a car the vehicle is right there and the tool box is close by.”
This, he said, is completely different when working with boats given that at
times it involves travelling to where the boat is located in order to get access
to the outboard engine or even while working in the shop it still proves to be a
tedious task.
Another stark contrast with working with the two types of engines is the use of
technology - particularly a computer.
According to Chuck, his instructor was a hands-on guy from the old school, so
when cars became more computerised, it proved to be an interesting learning
experience for him.
Chuck said that it was interesting to ‘hook up’ a car to a computer and to
have it tell you how many times the door was opened.
He is comfortable working with an engine where the subtle nuances of sound can
be a critical indicator of what could be a potential problem as against an
electronic box telling you what the problem is.
The 54-year-old Texan said that he recently left the Virgin Islands and headed
back to Oregon in the United States and during his stay there, jobs were not the
easiest thing to come by.
He said that while there were boats to work on, it was more a seasonal thing and
by then cars had become so advanced in their inner workings that repairing one
most definitely required a computer’s aid.
So, for a middle aged man whose central employ had become entwined with the
ocean and its vessels, the choice was not a difficult one, and so it was back to
the Virgin Islands.
On his return, he learnt that the entity which he had worked with required his
expertise for its Branch in the British Virgin Islands and he came highly
recommended, so it was off to Tortola for Chuck where he has since been doing
what he does best.
So accomplished he has become in his trade that on some occasions persons who
like the way he does his work would fly him off island to various locations
where their vessels are stranded so that his expert hands would have it ‘sea
ready’ again.