Stephen Trapani wrote:

Yes, but it isn't it a very good idea to instruct the mechanics to ask
you what to do you when they know what's wrong and tell you what they
think should be done and what it's going to cost?

Huh? It should be normal without instructing.

And at that point when they ask you that, isn't it a good idea to have
some idea of the likely problems and options?

They should have more of these than you do if they have repaired
hundreds of boats to your one or three. It's certainly a good idea to
challenge & contribute to their ideas in accord with what you do know,
and certainly to approve/disapprove the course of action, because
ultimately you are directing the work. This is not the same thing as
dictating what the whole problem may entail & the specific details of
how to go at it. If you are capable of the latter (and a few are), you
should give them a spec up front. But what you do know is also not the
same thing as what others may try to deduce unseen from your best
attempts at description & tell you. This is the nexus of the matter.

I know I've been in these
kinds of situations before with exactly this boat, I've regretted not
having enough information, and I've loved every time I'd previously had
advice from experts like some of the guys here, and been able to either
trust the mechanic to go ahead with what he thinks, or stop him!

Indeed there are times to stop or even discharge him/her/them. But we
have come full circle to the problem of their competence & your
selection of them, in a case of less-than-complete knowledge of the
problem & all applicable repair methods.

I'm simply trying to make the point that a good one has seen & solved
such problems hundreds of times more than the best owner, and that with
the right parties it is a dance of wielding & balancing authority over
(what is supposed to be) superior experience & abilities. The yard's
primary job is to relieve you of as much money as possible at the least
burdened cost, and yours is as a conservator of funds & dictator of the
end results. Yards are very expert at diminishing the bank accounts of
those who micromanage with various interruptions & ideas and get them
to pursue or change course in more than one direction. Just mentioning
another idea to an onboard mechanic in a boatyard can increase your
bill by 2 manhours & tap productivity by twice that, by getting him to
"go find & talk to his manager about it." The time for all "how-to"
ideas to be hashed through & resolved is before anything (including the
ticking of the money clock) starts, leaving only any emergent "off
course" situations for interfacing & dealing with during execution.
Since the latter are always found by the yard, that is what is meant by
having them come to you, not "instructing." And when they do, you both
will already have pre-discussed options from your initial dealing,
which will save even more time unless a major new problem is unearthed.

This seems all the more relevant in a typical small boatyard or small
marine mechanic situation where the worker may be punching in/out on 4
different boats in the same day, and in a very real sense you are also
competing with other owners' interests to keep your productivity higher
(and your bill lower) than theirs. In such a siutation there will be
at least one boat where significant worker time was allocated that
didn't do ****-all, you may be certain. :-)

With good people, the healthy & ongoing distrust should be financial,
not technical. If you get good at this, you will have the lowest bills
and the highest respect, and they will remember you for years and
befriend you as a prime customer. Excellent repair people care even
more about their pride than the money, and it is well-earned with years
of deckplate innovative solution thinking & living out the results.
Minimize this subtle but powerful fact at your peril. :-)

It is true that repair excellence is getting rarer by the day in the
entire marine world & has been for 40 years. I'm trying to help you
deal more productively with the superior goods, if you find them -
which is always the hardest part of the task. Trying to educate the
inferior goods yourself won't make them any better, and will only give
them split responsiblity to point at as soon as convenient - even if
you were "right."

HTH