Headless in La Paz

Excuse the take-off of the Marines’ motto "Semper Fidelis" (English: Always Faithful).
I’m still in Marina Palmira waiting to get the head back on the engine. Chris is in Tanzania finishing up here work travels crisscrossing the Serengeti. The head was supposed to be done by last Friday. Unfortunately Colin, the mechanic working on it, had an angina attack. He ended up flying to Guadalajara for some high-end cardiologist review. A quick test in the afternoon, insert a stent in the early evening and out of the hospital in the morning. All for less than half what it would cost in the US.
Colin came by this morning looking pretty good. He dropped off the head and associated parts with their pretty new paint job.
 

The shiny copper in center is one of the newly inserted injector sleeves; the whole reason we took the head off. He should be back in the morning to put the beast together.
Getting work done in Mexico is an interesting experience. There’s lots of parts available in La Paz. Finding them takes patience. Skilled workers are also here in reasonable quantities. Either locals with good skills or ex-pats that have setup shop. Actually getting jobs started and completed is a little tougher. We wanted to get a Bimini made for the boat to reduce the sun over the wheel when we are on watch. After looking at lots of boats I had finally come up with a design that I thought I could live with.  Jeorgia’s boom is very long and has end boom sheeting. This makes it difficult to get a Bimini to fit and be practicable. I checked around and got recommendations for two folks in La Paz. The warning was that there were others, but you’d have to stand over them if you wanted the seams to be sewn straight. I called up Danny, a local who has been doing canvas work in La Paz for a long time. He was interested in the job. Couldn’t come out today but he would definitely stop by tomorrow to look at it. It was one of those ‘tomorrows’ that translated into mañana, i.e. ‘’not today’’. No show. I call again and leave a number of messages – no show. Then I contact and ex-pat Doug, the one-eyed sailmaker. Next day he shows up within a half hour of when he said he’d be there. Nice guy, interesting talk. He can do the job. I talk to him over the next few days and he decides that the only way to get the job done in time would be to work weekends and he doesn’t want to do that now.  Oh well, its Mexico and we’ll worry about a Bimini latter.
Paul