{"id":3107,"date":"2025-01-24T16:06:38","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T16:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=3107"},"modified":"2025-02-05T00:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T00:28:07","slug":"colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/6766f4022dc5d9b993aeca62\/6793ba3362b2a95e008b126d\" width=\"100%\" height=\"80px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3109\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3109\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3109\" src=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-scaled-600x450.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4319-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3109\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The big awning<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Years ago, we had a friend from Colombia. He was married to Tamsin\u2019s 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 &#8211; mother must have been in her late 80s by that time. Ruben had her giggling and blushing like a schoolgirl.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But reality never seemed to align with aspiration.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His wife said it was because he had been spoiled as a boy &#8211; by his ten older sisters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now I know better. Ruben was Colombian, that\u2019s all. In Colombia, the concept of ma\u00f1ana is taken to a level the Spanish can only dream about.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They didn\u2019t tell me about this.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 &#8211; and it would be a fraction of the price of getting stuff done in the ABC Islands. I emailed the boatyard &#8211; absolutely, they could do stainless steel work. They had people to make awnings. This was a full-service yard.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marina Santa Marta is indeed impressive. It\u2019s 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s even a machine to check you into the loo\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And certainly, the yard manager would be round to give me a quote for the work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He did come. It was just that he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I never heard from him again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Besides, by that time, I had been introduced to Manuel.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Manuel is a great guy &#8211; and he\u2019s 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\u2019ll get Rub\u00e9n to come take a look. Someone to make the fabric roof? Raphael is your man.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dario, not so much. Dario was the rigger, except he had his own boat to maintain &#8211; and since he did charters, he couldn\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, courtesy of my online Spanish classes, I translated \u201cma\u00f1ana\u201d as \u201ctomorrow\u201d 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 ma\u00f1ana means \u201cto procrastinate\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the end, Manuel came on a Sunday and did the job himself &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Manuel wouldn\u2019t charge me a penny (\u201cMy gift to you!\u201d). 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s the culture,\u201d Manuel explained. \u201cI\u2019m Colombian and it drives me crazy, but there\u2019s nothing you can do about it. Like you say in English: Herding cats!\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And let\u2019s face it, I was the stranger in the country. If I didn\u2019t like it, I should have stayed at home &#8211; and besides, everyone was so thoroughly friendly and eager to please\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like the day I decided to get the watermaker motor repaired all by myself &#8211; without recourse to Manuel\u2019s army of tradesmen. I looked up \u201celectric motor repairs\u201d and found a place that claimed to be open 24 hours. I didn\u2019t risk testing that, but turned up at nine o\u2019clock in the morning.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Three and a half hours later, Leonardo and Hermides had repaired the motor, freed the seized spare pump head &#8211; and only charged me \u00a327 including the cost of the bearings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3108\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3108\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3108\" src=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-scaled-600x450.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4345-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3108\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leonardo, Hemides and the watermaker motor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019d said he had it all finished it, but just wanted everything to be perfect for me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think the real classic was when he told me he hadn\u2019t been able to come on Tuesday because it was his sister\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, you\u2019ve always got to allow for the unexpected\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Still, it really is an impressive awning &#8211; and the little bimini looks as though it\u2019s going to be good, too. And the sun is still shining and I seem to have developed a little Mambo shimmy after six o\u2019clock&#8230;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3111\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3111\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3111\" src=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-scaled-600x450.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/IMG_4423-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3111\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">With Raphael &#8211; smiles all round<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, we had a friend from Colombia. He was married to Tamsin\u2019s 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 &#8211; mother must have been in her late 80s by that time. &#8230; <a title=\"Colombia\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/colombia\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Colombia\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3107"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3142,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions\/3142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}