Totally Different

We took our google translated letter of concerns to the boat yard and spoke to "Alex". He is this really nice guy who really wants to see everything completed as we had hoped. He read through the Spanish letter and looked quite perplexed. He finally asked if we had the English version :-)! I guess the translator made a mess of it. Anyway, in the letter we asked to speak to the Boat Yard Manager (Frank) who went to school in the USA and speaks great English to discuss our concerns. Alex read through the English version and got to the end and said (in pretty good English), "We will make sure that you leave here happy customers"!

By 2pm that afternoon Alex had spoke to the different trades people involved and brought us all together in Franks office. Frank is a nice looking, young, well spoken, reasonable man. You could tell that everyone in the room really respected him but he didn't seem to gain his respect the same way we had seen other managers in the yards get it through yelling and anger. I think he has a history of being fair and reasonable. We reviewed our concerns and he translated as necessary to the trade's people. We all then went to the boat and reviewed the problems. He apologized for the fact that the fellow we had dealt with originally had difficulty communicating our needs to the workers involved and that he had been let go due to this. We described what we needed done and Frank translated directly to the people who would be doing the work. At the end of the conversation I said that my last concern was timing. I let him know that we were targeting to leave Cartagena by the end of the month. He stopped me mid sentence and said, "The work will begin tomorrow"! My face broke with the first smile of the day.

We spent the day cleaning Artemo and hardly made a dent in the amount of dirt on board. The decks are covered in dust and dirt and inside is equally as bad. Luckily Amelia has taken to enjoying cleaning, go figure? I don't want to say anything to jinx it. Alex prefers to avoid us and hides out hoping to go unnoticed. I will be quick to change this!

Today Graham went to the yard on his own since the boat should have the workers on board fiber glassing the cockpit. He gave me a call when he arrived at 8:30am and sure enough they were already well underway, great news. Graham is supervising and working on a list of items that need to be completed prior to launch. None of them are too large but given the heat in the yard, I feel for him. He is the man!!! We took our cell phones from Canada to this guy on the street (Jose) and had him unlock them and set us up to be able to call each other cheaply. It is unbelievable for 40 bucks both phones are unlocked and we can phone each other unlimited for a year. It is nice to be able to be in touch.

Our place is coming together. Even though this situation is a bit reminiscent of Grenada, it is TOTALLY different. Our frame of mind is also TOTALLY different. This is just the way it goes and this is the life we have chosen and this time we have a better idea of what to expect. Living on or off the boat the adventure has begun again!