No outstretched palms

We’ve been getting a lot of emails suggesting that perhaps we need to grease some Tico palms to get things done. But to clarify, we are dealing almost exclusively with Americans. The yard manager and the marina manager are Americans. As far as we can tell the Ticos working here don’t do any more than detailing of the huge sport fisherman boats which are almost all owned by Americans, none of whom are in evidence. We are, as far as we can tell, the only people occupying any boat in the marina. We’re realizing that there is no staff skilled labor at this yard and we’re looking for an outside fiberglass person to come do our repair.

Yesterday Jack dropped the headliner and spent the day removing the bolts on the damaged lifeline stanchions, something we were repeatedly told the marina would take care of and it’s now clear they don’t have the manpower or skill to do. It was a long and nasty job because the bolts had all been bent from the force of the boom hitting the stanchions. The good news is that there’s no underlying deck damage. The bad news is that the bolt holes on the new stanchion bases don’t exactly line up with the old ones, so the holes will have to be filled with epoxy and then re-drilled. It’s not a big job, but a messy one, especially since these holes are right above our bed.

And, after a happy couple of dry years, with the bolts holes open we got a few drips in the rain, even after careful taping on deck. We don’t want to put any caulk in the holes because they have to be epoxied, so we’ll double up on the taping to stay dry until the new stanchions are bedded and tightened down.

We did not want to be doing this, but we must if we’re every going to get out of here.