Colombia

The big awning

Years ago, we had a friend from Colombia. He was married to Tamsin’s best friend at the time. His name was Ruben and he was the most charming man you could hope to meet. I remember introducing him to my mother one Christmas – mother must have been in her late 80s by that time. Ruben had her giggling and blushing like a schoolgirl.

There was only one thing you had to know about Ruben: He was totally unreliable. He would say he would be home for dinner and arrive at three in the morning, banging on the door and wondering why everyone was asleep. A promise from Ruben was something you would believe with all your heart because surely someone so earnest and loveable could only have your best interests at heart…

But reality never seemed to align with aspiration.

His wife said it was because he had been spoiled as a boy – by his ten older sisters.

Now I know better. Ruben was Colombian, that’s all. In Colombia, the concept of mañana is taken to a level the Spanish can only dream about.

They didn’t tell me about this.

Instead, before I set off from Aruba, they told me that I could get anything done in Colombia: There was an excellent marina in Santa Marta with every facility – and it would be a fraction of the price of getting stuff done in the ABC Islands. I emailed the boatyard – absolutely, they could do stainless steel work. They had people to make awnings. This was a full-service yard.

Marina Santa Marta is indeed impressive. It’s not expensive, they take care of the byzantine check-in procedure with immigration and customs which normally requires an agent and anything up to four days. I’ve never seen such security: Not only do you need a facial-recognition scan to get into the marina complex but there are fingerprint sensors for access to the pontoons. There’s even a machine to check you into the loo…

And certainly, the yard manager would be round to give me a quote for the work.

He did come. It was just that he didn’t appear very familiar with the idea of a bimini or solid guardrails for mounting the extra solar panels. I showed him the arrangement on other boats. I insisted he take measurements (lent him a tape measure). He went away promising to come back with a quote in a couple of days.

I never heard from him again.

Besides, by that time, I had been introduced to Manuel.

Manuel is a great guy – and he’s got himself a terrific little business in Global Marine Services. He speaks perfect English and he knows everyone. Need a welder to build you a bimini, he’ll get Rubén to come take a look. Someone to make the fabric roof? Raphael is your man.

Actually, I wanted a big awning as well, covering the whole boat from the mast to the stern, with flaps for the late afternoon sun. Raphael came and looked (he had his own tape measure). Raphael and I got on like a house on fire, what with my Spanish lessons and Google Translate.

Dario, not so much. Dario was the rigger, except he had his own boat to maintain – and since he did charters, he couldn’t very well leave the boat sinking if he was due to take a birthday party out this evening, so would it be OK if he came tomorrow to move the winch from one side of the mast to the other?

Of course, courtesy of my online Spanish classes, I translated “mañana” as “tomorrow” and thought no more of it. A week later the winch was still on the wrong side and I was learning about the Indefinite Future Tense (in which mañana means “to procrastinate”.

In the end, Manuel came on a Sunday and did the job himself – and it turned out to be a much more difficult than it looked. Fittings that have been in situ for 51 years can be like that.

But Manuel wouldn’t charge me a penny (“My gift to you!”). Also, it gave us an opportunity to sit in the cockpit with a couple of cans of Club Colombia as the sun went down and the music on the party boats turned up, and discuss the fundamental problem.

“It’s the culture,” Manuel explained. “I’m Colombian and it drives me crazy, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Like you say in English: Herding cats!”

And let’s face it, I was the stranger in the country. If I didn’t like it, I should have stayed at home – and besides, everyone was so thoroughly friendly and eager to please…

Like the day I decided to get the watermaker motor repaired all by myself – without recourse to Manuel’s army of tradesmen. I looked up “electric motor repairs” and found a place that claimed to be open 24 hours. I didn’t risk testing that, but turned up at nine o’clock in the morning.

Three and a half hours later, Leonardo and Hermides had repaired the motor, freed the seized spare pump head – and only charged me £27 including the cost of the bearings.

 

Leonardo, Hemides and the watermaker motor

If everyone had been so efficient, I could have been in and out in a couple of weeks and on to Cartagena and the month of intensive Spanish classes I had promised myself. Instead, I was stuck in Santa Marta for more than six weeks as Raphael cut and re-cut the awning and Monday turned into Thursday and then next week, and his supplier let him down, which was odd because he’d said he had it all finished it, but just wanted everything to be perfect for me.

I think the real classic was when he told me he hadn’t been able to come on Tuesday because it was his sister’s birthday.

Well, you’ve always got to allow for the unexpected…

Still, it really is an impressive awning – and the little bimini looks as though it’s going to be good, too. And the sun is still shining and I seem to have developed a little Mambo shimmy after six o’clock…

With Raphael – smiles all round

5 Responses to Colombia

  • Great write-up for such an inspiring and outstanding adventure! Keep up the good work. it’s nice to be reading your book and following your adventures!

  • LOL. I used to live in Taos, New Mexico, which has a 400 year history of Spanish settlement. I came to understand that in NM “mañana” simply means “not today”; it implies nothing about when something might actually happen.

  • You have me laughing , life is so good with the right attitude, and you have that for sure..!!

  • Tranquilo! No problema! Manana!
    It helps to forget the rat race we have trained our minds to accept as normal.
    The Colombians are great people, the country itself is amazingly diverse where the Andean Mountains splits in 3 “cordilleras” and two different oceans cover 1/2 its borders.

  • . All sounds familiar with boats but could , lets be honest, be anywhere in the world . My son lives in Colombia married to a Colombian. From what I can see it all depends on who you know!!

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