Viva Nicaragua!
16 December 2011 | San Juan del Sur
Capitan
11/1/11 – 12/1/11: Viva Nicaragua!: I thought I would hate the place after being introduced to it through corruption and a mess with officials, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting places where I had been in a positive way. The people, the local and westerners and the country itself seemed to offer barely irresistible combination. As a negative side some things needed some extra effort to get done.
The insurance surveyor was finally determined and sent over from Panama. We came well along with him and I turned out to take him for a dinner to ask some advice on different steps of the process. We also found some additional damage and got the claim way up there, close to totaling the boat.
As soon as he was gone I started fixing the boat. I ended up interviewing bunch of boat workers on the dry dock and selecting 3 main guys that were lead by the most experienced one capable of making some decisions and suggesting the major ones to me. It became very interesting to work with local guys. The personal qualifications and personal characteristics needed to work as a team lead by the owner of the boat. So their Looking up at the forthcoming trip to Panama I ended up hiring my good cruiser friend as an assistant project manager already helping out before the trip and then taking full on responsibilities as I was gone.
Monday’s movie night, Tuesday’s Trivia nights, Wednesday’s poker night were nice westerner type of get-togethers weighing out with the local interactions on the yard, machine shops, fiber glass and paint shops.
All the Captains from the boat yard and anchorages had a great synergy with lots of casual discussions, suggestions and things in common. It was a good habit to buy some cokes and water to guards and yard people and sometimes lunches to my own guys. That way the shower rooms were always open for me and people would have a smile on their face everywhere. The respect on each person and on their work were the key to get people on my side and create a great team spirit spiced up with some humor of the Capitan in primitive Spanish. Sometimes it was hard to combine the respect and getting stuff done right. A concept ‘nica fix’ was often used among westerners where stuff would be glued or duck taped together to last a bit longer. There was different stages of nica fixes in variety of technical applications, but overall my main concern was to avoid getting my boat nica fixed, but actually repairing things properly in timely manner, yet still having happy people around who would not try to screw me over when a first opportunity would present itself. The start was good, but it was hard not to open a rum bottle to ease off the frustrations in the process.
All local people had fairly strange histories. Most of them used to be raging alcoholics; they still talked a lot of about rum, the Nicaraguan national drink, but due to variety of health problems barely none of them could drink even a drop any more. They all were suffering to feed their families. Several kids and wives were common. The record amount of kids I heard was 16 from 5 different women. Tragedies like for example having a couple of month old baby drink paint thinner in Managuan cab thinking it was a water bottle were amazing. Of course this particular baby died and the guy ended up even to a deeper cycle in his life that then led to a total absolutism and hardworking daddy cycle.
Supposedly the crane driver on the boat yard had been lifting the boats up against the concrete wall drunk as a skunk still couple years backwards, but health issues straighten him out later on.
To be continued...