At last the long awaited sailmaker came back to his shop. Then to Röde Orm. The bad news was that upon his visit onboard, he raised the price wanted for making a sprayhood for our boat. As a matter of fact he raisedhis asking price more than 60% compared to the median value of the estimate we got from him some weeks ago.
Yes, the estimate that had us come here in the first place.

This made me really disappointed. Then upset, and finally plain angry. That kind of behaviour is not meant to be encouraged.

As one of many coinsidences in life, I just happened to talk to a couple of other cruising sailors over in the marina a few days ago who strongly recommended Jerry - another English sailmaker who has set up a little shop here.

I gave hin a ring, he sounded nice and positive. Also, he told me right away that he needed 2-3 weeks to do this job since otherwise 'he would have to make a few other customers disspointed'. That's an explanation I ccan understand very well, so we made an appointment for him to come on board and give us a price.

He did that, and also came up with some rather nice ideas, when we told him of our plans for a combined awning and rainwater catcher ffor the cockpit. All this at a price that was well under hs colleague (read competitor) and not a all much over what I had estimated it at myself. Fne, we made a deal on the spot.

He doesn't keep the stainless pipes and the fabric on stock so it will take him about a week to get it delivered. In the meantime, we'll move to Alvor, 5 M to the west of here, for a change of scenery. Then the sprayhood job is supposed to be finished in a couple of days or so during which we can get Isabelle's laptop back from the repir shop plus a few other little thngs on the agenda.


We haven't seen Jerry's work yet, but ave got good recommendations from several of his customers so we hope for the best.