As the foot for the outboard on my boat is shot I decided to correct the situation of having but one boat. A friend of mine collects boats and outboards, buying them when people are leaving town, anxious to get rid of them. He buys them at excellent prices and holds on to them until somebody wants to pay market value.
On Saturday I hitched a ride with another friend to check out the boat. It is a very lightweight fifteen footer. A substantial 12 footer, much more heavily constructed and with substantially more freeboard, can be had for $1,600 new. A new 15 horsepower four stroke can be purchased for about $1,400. On Sunday my friend brought the boat to town and I took him back home and went back home with it. On Monday, I ran into a guy from New Jersey that I met on the street a couple of weeks ago, asking about where to buy an inexpensive boat. If you just want to tool around in the bay, a little boat with a little outboard is good for most months and being economical to operate and maintain affords maximum cruising for minimal dollars.
We headed out to the finca in Dolphin Bay, where I encountered a former worker, sleeping in the restaurant with his uncle, dead drunk as he has been every time I have seen him in the last week. Last Friday a friend of mine found him floating in the bay, passed out in his boat. Yup, sure enough, a gas generator had been taken from the property. A former worker, by all accounts hard working and honest had taken it and reported doing so to the corregidor. He has been trying to collect $900 in wages for over a year from the property owner. Can't say that I blame the guy. The pool is leaking. This is going to be a big issue.
We continued down to my property in Aguacate and dropped by to collect a long overdue debt in Loma Partida. Not much success collecting there. Back to town before running out of daylight. I pulled into Casa Verde to find a red light flashing on the outboard. WTF? I checked the oil. It was seriously low and filthy, with bits of metal in it. Damn. I pulled the cowling, there was oil all over the tiny block, thick black oil.
I crashed on a friend's boat, I didn't want to take this thing home.
On Tuesday we went to Dolphin Bay to pick up my stereo so that my friend could use it on a big tri-miran on Friday for a cruise. We stopped by another guy's house to look at a well used 60 HP that I might want to buy for the foot. The parts to fix mine are $780. The guy wants $1,200 for the motor, but the upper unit is shot. I will offer $800 for the whole thing. Not much demand for 60 HP four stroke parts hereabouts.
Back to my house we took my boat and towed it to a fiberglass guy. He started working on the boat last December. Nothing is easy in Bocas. The damn boat almost sunk last month, 10 miles off shore with doctors and nurses and Red Cross people aboard. It took three people bailing non stop just to keep up. A shitty patch job had given way when the boat had been rolled up on logs onto the beach. I will have to post the whole story some day.
Listen, just cut the whole floor out and put in a deck of treated pine. This floor has been soaked four times. It will never dry out. This will shed another 600 pounds, I am guessing and allow for inspection of hull integrity, wiring and cabling. Simple is better. Less is more. Don't go gringo in Bocas. Today I will try to negotiate a reasonable price with an unreasonable person.
On Tuesday, I ran into the boat owner and told him my tale. He asked his favorite mechanic to look at the motor. The guy found nothing wrong. Well, he did his usual not much. I bought some engine cleaner and cleaned off the block and topped it off with oil and took it home.
I got home to find an Indian sleeping on my couch. Apparently he had spent two days there. One of my neighbors decided I needed my house watched as I often don't go home. This guy cleared maybe 500 square feet of grass in two days. That is about an hour's work. I didn't ask him to be there. I retired to my room to read a book. Everytime I walked through the living room he did nothing but lay back and watch me. This is disturbing. I woke up in the middle of the night parched, reached into my new refrigerator and took out a bottle of water and took a huge swig. WTF? I turned on the lights. It was a bottle of Bulgarian moonshine left by some woman as a gift. Jesus, I poured it down the drain.
OK dude, you have to go. I drove the worker back to my neighbors. I told him I would have to talk with his friend, that I hadn't asked for him to come sleep at my house. He did little more than use a massive amount of toilet paper. Thanks for leaving me none. No, I have no intention of paying you. Nothing was clear. He speaks no English and my Spanish wasn't up to the task.
So, let's see, I have a generator to fix, a leaking pool, two boats out of commission, two phones that won't take a charge and a computer, camera and tablet that have been waiting in Panama City to be repaired for two weeks. The taxi driver I sent them to went on vacation the day I air shipped them to him. There are dozens of people I could have used. Would have been nice to tell me that you were not going to get around to it for a couple of weeks.
\
The computer I ordered to replace my dead one was never shipped by Amazon to the woman in the states who was coming down here. My bank had denied payment due to fraud detection based on the new ship to address. By the time I got back on the internet it was too late to have it shipped as she was leaving at three o'clock in the morning the next day.
One of these days, something is going to go right for me. It just has to. In the meantime I will just continue getting shit upon by the universe.
On Saturday I hitched a ride with another friend to check out the boat. It is a very lightweight fifteen footer. A substantial 12 footer, much more heavily constructed and with substantially more freeboard, can be had for $1,600 new. A new 15 horsepower four stroke can be purchased for about $1,400. On Sunday my friend brought the boat to town and I took him back home and went back home with it. On Monday, I ran into a guy from New Jersey that I met on the street a couple of weeks ago, asking about where to buy an inexpensive boat. If you just want to tool around in the bay, a little boat with a little outboard is good for most months and being economical to operate and maintain affords maximum cruising for minimal dollars.
We headed out to the finca in Dolphin Bay, where I encountered a former worker, sleeping in the restaurant with his uncle, dead drunk as he has been every time I have seen him in the last week. Last Friday a friend of mine found him floating in the bay, passed out in his boat. Yup, sure enough, a gas generator had been taken from the property. A former worker, by all accounts hard working and honest had taken it and reported doing so to the corregidor. He has been trying to collect $900 in wages for over a year from the property owner. Can't say that I blame the guy. The pool is leaking. This is going to be a big issue.
We continued down to my property in Aguacate and dropped by to collect a long overdue debt in Loma Partida. Not much success collecting there. Back to town before running out of daylight. I pulled into Casa Verde to find a red light flashing on the outboard. WTF? I checked the oil. It was seriously low and filthy, with bits of metal in it. Damn. I pulled the cowling, there was oil all over the tiny block, thick black oil.
I crashed on a friend's boat, I didn't want to take this thing home.
On Tuesday we went to Dolphin Bay to pick up my stereo so that my friend could use it on a big tri-miran on Friday for a cruise. We stopped by another guy's house to look at a well used 60 HP that I might want to buy for the foot. The parts to fix mine are $780. The guy wants $1,200 for the motor, but the upper unit is shot. I will offer $800 for the whole thing. Not much demand for 60 HP four stroke parts hereabouts.
Back to my house we took my boat and towed it to a fiberglass guy. He started working on the boat last December. Nothing is easy in Bocas. The damn boat almost sunk last month, 10 miles off shore with doctors and nurses and Red Cross people aboard. It took three people bailing non stop just to keep up. A shitty patch job had given way when the boat had been rolled up on logs onto the beach. I will have to post the whole story some day.
Listen, just cut the whole floor out and put in a deck of treated pine. This floor has been soaked four times. It will never dry out. This will shed another 600 pounds, I am guessing and allow for inspection of hull integrity, wiring and cabling. Simple is better. Less is more. Don't go gringo in Bocas. Today I will try to negotiate a reasonable price with an unreasonable person.
On Tuesday, I ran into the boat owner and told him my tale. He asked his favorite mechanic to look at the motor. The guy found nothing wrong. Well, he did his usual not much. I bought some engine cleaner and cleaned off the block and topped it off with oil and took it home.
I got home to find an Indian sleeping on my couch. Apparently he had spent two days there. One of my neighbors decided I needed my house watched as I often don't go home. This guy cleared maybe 500 square feet of grass in two days. That is about an hour's work. I didn't ask him to be there. I retired to my room to read a book. Everytime I walked through the living room he did nothing but lay back and watch me. This is disturbing. I woke up in the middle of the night parched, reached into my new refrigerator and took out a bottle of water and took a huge swig. WTF? I turned on the lights. It was a bottle of Bulgarian moonshine left by some woman as a gift. Jesus, I poured it down the drain.
OK dude, you have to go. I drove the worker back to my neighbors. I told him I would have to talk with his friend, that I hadn't asked for him to come sleep at my house. He did little more than use a massive amount of toilet paper. Thanks for leaving me none. No, I have no intention of paying you. Nothing was clear. He speaks no English and my Spanish wasn't up to the task.
So, let's see, I have a generator to fix, a leaking pool, two boats out of commission, two phones that won't take a charge and a computer, camera and tablet that have been waiting in Panama City to be repaired for two weeks. The taxi driver I sent them to went on vacation the day I air shipped them to him. There are dozens of people I could have used. Would have been nice to tell me that you were not going to get around to it for a couple of weeks.
\
The computer I ordered to replace my dead one was never shipped by Amazon to the woman in the states who was coming down here. My bank had denied payment due to fraud detection based on the new ship to address. By the time I got back on the internet it was too late to have it shipped as she was leaving at three o'clock in the morning the next day.
One of these days, something is going to go right for me. It just has to. In the meantime I will just continue getting shit upon by the universe.
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