Magma Grills are Evil

Those of you who regularly read this blog have probably figured out that I'm a pretty laid back guy.   It takes a lot to make me angry, but our pricey Magma Catalina grill did it easily yesterday.

The day started out great.  C Dock decided to order pizza for lunch, and Bill and Patty from Enigma volunteered to pick it up.  While they were gone, the clouds built and we heard thunder so Gene, Ruby, Chevy, and I high tailed it up to the pavilion to await the pizza.  Gene and Patty arrived just as the clouds opened up, perfect timing.  We enjoyed the pizza, and Ruby and Chevy got a good helping of pizza bones.

Bob, a fisherman at our marina, came by and asked if we'd like some fresh fish.  He had a freezer full already and needed to find a home for his latest catch, and so C Dock got a cooler full of Mahi-Mahi.  We could have passed it around to everyone at the marina, or we could grill it and make it into a party.   We chose the later.  Since Drift Away has a fairly large grill, I volunteered to cook it.   I started at 5 o'clock.

It sure looked good.

And then the trouble started.  The piezo lighter stopped working 30 seconds after we bought this expensive grill and we have to light it with a lighter, which I did.  And then, as has happened since we've owned this piece of junk, the flame went out.   I don't have a very good sense of smell and I couldn't smell the gas.  I only noticed when the fish stopped cooking.   I stuck the lighter into a hole on the side and clicked it and the grill lit with a huge WOOOOSH!  I had to do this repeatedly, all night long, as the flame continually went out.  Each batch of fish took an hour to grill.

I guess I should be grateful that someone was watching over me.  I had the tiki-torches lit  on the stern of the boat, one right next to the grill.  I'm lucky the torch didn't ignite the propane leaking out of the dead grill and blow up C Dock.

C Dock was in party mode though and everyone waited patiently. 

I was getting more perturbed by the minute, constantly checking and relighting the grill.  Not even this beautiful sunset made things better.  Dan chimed in that he has a Magma grill and it too is a piece of crap.  He hates it.

The fish were delicious though.   So I've been told.  The last batch finished after 8 PM and by that time I was so aggravated I just didn't feel like eating.  I spent three hours looking at fish as I fought with that lousy piece of junk grill and I viewed it as the enemy.

Although I feel like deep-sixing it, I think I'll call Magma on Monday to see what they have to say.  There must be a way to fix it, although a quick google search shows that the problem has been around for years and I'm not alone.

This problem reminds me of a time about 15 years ago when I had a dozen computers I had built and was setting up for a customer.  Each one had a tape backup device installed, and not a one of them worked.  Calls to tech support were of no use as each customer service agent told me that no one else was having issues and the problem must lie with my computers.  I called and called and got escalated to an engineer who finally admitted that there was a firmware problem with the tape drives and they had been trying to sort it out for many months.  

"You know that these drives don't work and you're shipping them anyway?" I asked.

"Of course.", he said, "Do you think we'd stop selling product?".  And there you have it, in a nutshell.

Or maybe I'll just take the grill off Drift Away and mount it on the Whaler, which is sitting up in the yard.  No, I don't know when it will be fixed.  Today I'm in I-don't-give-a-shit mode.  Maybe I'll just shut myself up down below and watch old John Wayne movies on DVD. 

The Duke would know what to do.   He'd just kick some sense into the tech support guy at Magma.  Pilgrim.