I never thought I'd fall in love with a green boat. My favorite color is blue. Almost everything in my closet is blue. When I draw boats, I invariably draw them with blue hulls. So it was surprising to fall in love with Guizmo, with its green hull.
Unfortunately, the hull had some major cosmetic damage (though no structural issues) when I bought it. You can see it in these pics -- the repair job left much to be desired.
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| Someone went crazy with bondo | The crashbox on Guizmo seems to be well-used |
The first, and to-date the only, thing I contracted out on Guizmo was a new paint job. The boatyard in Pto Pollenca charges 32 euro per hour, which seemed like a great rate (equivalent work would cost $65-$75 in the US). This seemed like a great deal, so I opted for it. I was under too much time pressure to spring for painting the whole boat, which would have cost 2000 euro, so I opted for the boatyard to do some patch painting. I also offered to help, partly to keep costs down, and partly because I enjoy fiberglass work.
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| Jaime, a whiz with a spray gun |
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| Toni, El Patron |
They assigned a guy named Jaime to painting the Guizmo. He's 60+, has only one tooth and is incredibly likeable. He's either supremely meticulous, or he's been assigned to me to work very slowly and rack up hours. I don't know which, and I'm afraid to ask for a younger, peppier worker, because I suspect they might all be kind of slow, and no one else will be as fun as Jaime. In Jaime's defense, he does not take a siesta like everyone else and looks down on everyone who does. We speak a weird mixture of Spanish, English and French. He got very upset when he first spoke to me and I said "no parla Catalan." His response was "(points to me) No parla Catalan. (points to himself) No parla Catalan! (points to self again) Parla Mallorquin!!!" Technically, neutral third parties consider Mallorquin a dialect of Catalan, but clearly, these neutral third parties have never met Jaime or else they would not be alive to pass judgment on this topic. And apparently, I stumbled onto a political minefield right there.
Jaime works for Toni, who reminds me of the singer Al Bano, who sang the song Felicita with Romina Powers. Well-educated, very likeable, he's also a very conservative engineer or else a very good salesman or both. He kept counseling me to delay the paint application until the weather improved, and I ended up taking some chances to be able to launch the boat on time. Luckily, the clouds dissipated without any precipitation, and the boat looks as awesome as it does in the pics below. His conservatism also made me buy way more paint than I needed, so now I have enough paint left over to paint the boat once more, and then paint all the Spanish shutters on all the houses in Pto Pollenca. Oh well. Interestingly, Toni asked me why someone would ever leave Mallorca to visit the US. I was at a complete loss -- I cannot imagine much that might draw someone off of this awesome island and live in the US.
Jaime has done an amazing job on the paint. I went with a high-tech paint where some dude comes by your boat, takes color samples with a spectrometer, and makes a special paint that precisely matches your color. I was skeptical about this, but the resulting paint really does match perfectly. The boat no longer has any damaged spots. It looks awesome.
Now, onto the other repairs....
