VILISAR GETS A NEW COAT
Golfito, Costa Rica, Thursday, February 11, 2010


The steady tropical rains in Panamá last summer made a complete mess of Vilisar’s deck paintwork. What the rain didn’t achieve the tropical sun did. After each rain parts of the deck paint had lifted and we were tracking flecks and chips of paint into the cabin once it had all dried. There was probably 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch of old enamel containing sand (non-skid) to be removed.

After Kathleen left for Germany to work for a couple of months, I made contact with a machine and mechanics shop near the virtual marina. The first task was to pump out the microbe-contaminated diesel fuel that had been clogging our fuel filters. In the course of this I met Chiso (one nickname for Francisco), a mid-fifties local guy who does fiberglass and painting work. He said he would be happy to work on lifting Vilisar’s old paint and painting her anew. Unfortunately, he could only work on Sundays until his current project (re-fibre-glassing a fishing boat’s fish tanks) was completed.

He arrived on the following Sunday with a big angle grinder, heavy-duty #36 discs and his lunch in a bag. But one look at the sad decks told him that the sand in the paint was going to mean plenty of grinding and lots and lots of discs. He probed around with a putty knife and in no time was lifting large patches of old paint. He decided that this was the way to go and that sanding could take place once the wood was more-or-less laid bare. Over three hot and sunny Sundays he basically lifted all the old paint with his big, tough hands while quaffing a cold beer every couple of hours. I couldn’t have lasted an hour out there, beer or no beer. Beer became an issue because, while we have beer on board, we have no refrigeration. The second day therefore, Chiso was standing at the floating dock when I rowed in to pick him up; he had a workman’s round cooler full of ice and immediately plunked six or eight beers into it as soon as he arrived aboard. “I always have two beers for breakfast”, he told me. Given the intensity of the sun and his heavy physical labour he needed it. I certainly never saw him in any way drunk, incompetent or out of line.

It had four or five long working days over three or four weekends to get everything cleared down to the bare deck planks. That left the lazarette deck and various other areas still with the old paint. I feared they would never get done in this round of painting. In a small talk with Chiso one day I asked if we shouldn’t just wait until he had finished the old project and then focus on Vilisar. It is hard to imagine the amount of old paint dust and saw dust that is thrown up by the grinding machine once that came into play. Despite closing down every opening to belowdecks and turning of the cabin fans, dust was still getting inside. Outside looked like the aftermath of the Dresden bombing! I was getting tired of having to clean up every Sunday night or Monday morning. Couldn’t we just get this done in one go? I would wait until he was available. “Claro!” he replied. “Hablamos a Miércoles in la tarde.” (Great! Let’s talk on Wednesday afternoon”)”

To my great surprise Chiso showed up by panga on Tuesday morning around 0700. He had arranged for a spot at a dock near where he lives about 5 kilometres farther up the gulf at a little one-street, waterside hamlet known locally – wait for it! – Kilometro Cinco. In a few minutes Vilisar had upped anchor and we were steaming along; thirty minutes after that we were moored alongside a blue and white fishing boat where the Caterpillar engine mechanic was working on the engine. The captain – he introduced himself as Ponce – was tying us off and placing big fenders. Jose, the owner of the house cum workshop at the top of the dock was there too and soon a long extension cord was being run to us and Chiso was creating more clouds of dust. We had made sure we were anchored well off when we were grinding before. Here, nobody seemed to mind. Another fishing boat was having its small diesel engine taken apart and worked on. A huge fishing boat owned by a Gringo who had been converting it to a pleasure boat and a carpenter who worked under the pavilion at the top of the ramp completed the group picture. Oh, I forgot the various fishermen who were hanging about or doing desultory jobs and the young boys who are on summer vacation from school until Monday and like to come down and hang out with the men. Not one woman in sight the whole time Vilisar was tied up there (altogether five days and nights). I chat with the men who keep up a continuous chatter with each other while they work. They make no effort to curb their turn of speech which is heavily laced with words that would turn your mother’s hair grey. It certainly expanded my own Spanish vocabulary!

Ponce is captain La Amistad, the big fishing boat to which we are parallel-tied. He has a kind of natural country charm and points out that Vilisar has a lot of growth on her bottom. I had been planning to dive and clean it this week. Would I like him to clean it? Yes. Quanto? In typical Tico (Costa Rican) fashion he quoted a price three times what anyone in their right mind would pay in the U.S.A. or Canada. I made him a more reasonable offer, but he didn’t want to accept. I told him quietly that I would just do it myself, then. OK! he replied, I accept your offer. Ha! I’m getting better at this!

While he was cleaning the prop and hull I asked Chiso if Ponce was a good worker, and should he work on the painting project too. Chiso only has three days available and it would be better if he not only had somebody to help, but also somebody he can talk to. I agree a price and an hour later Ponce is popping a cerveza (beer) and sanding away with gusto.


Eventually Chiso has ground off the lazarette deck down to the planking. You can’t believe how pleasing the bare wood is to the eye! George Friend, the original builder back in Victoria, surely knew what he was doing some thirty-five to forty years ago! The great expanse of the two-inch thick red cedar planks, now covered by me last week with pristine white wood priming paint, was already a joy to see (I also registered that all the caulking was in fine shape). The lazarette deck is even more impressive because of its complicated layout. I get busy cleaning up the dust and paint chips, sweeping everything into a garbage bag. Once clean of dust, Ponce starts laying on a layer of thinned-down primer as a first coat while joking with Chiso and one or two fishermen who come to chat and watch.

Within the hour Ponce‘s two boys, Kelvin, 15, and Carlos, 10, are down to see what’s gong on. The proud father tells me that Kelvin is a lady’s man but doesn’t much like boats. Carlos loves to be around the dock. Kelvin clears off fairly quickly in case he is put to work, his father laughs. Carlos lies under the awing, watching and absorbing by osmosis the life of a man in rural Costa Rica.

At the end of the second day at the dock, everything has been ground free of paint or, if in reasonably good shape, just sanded. After a farewell beer for the evening, the men leave and I sweep up everything, wash down the decks, first with buckets of salt water followed by a degreasing and a rinse off with the fresh-water hose. This is just in time for a major squall that sweeps Golfito with heavy rain. I take a shower under the hose, let the heavy rain pour over me and retire dripping below to a cabin stuffed with deck items, tools and paint cans. And still covered in grinding dust!

Living here at the dock, I get to meet and know real Ticos. This is really almost worth the project, which I had been resenting because of the heavy work in the intense sun. There is a whole social atmosphere that is completely different from either our working life in industrial countries or the so-called ‘community’ of cruisers.

I mentioned the social aspects of working here in poor countries in comparison to more modern industrial economies. In our modern workplaces we are really working alone in our little cubicles, in our brains and in our computers. Chatter is disturbing and contacts to employees are by and large weak. Social life in the workplace, that is, is virtually non-existent, or should I say only ‘virtual’ as employees sneak time on Facebook or porno sites.

Here, I am immediately accepted into a man’s world. There are no women anywhere in sight. Would they even want to be doing work like this? Of course not! Nobody ever seems to be working alone. A mechanic has a helper to talk to; three young fishermen are over on the beach mending nets, chatting and laughing; Chiso is happier having Ponce working with him, and they keep up a steady patter. Chiso kept wanting to gab with me, and sometimes I did. But I am not quite up to his speed in Spanish. The young carpentero in his workshop up under the dock pavilion usually has somebody sitting around to chat with while he is building a frame for a double bed. There are fishermen on the way to the dock, for example, or Jose who owns the place who will sit in the rocking chair and chat.

What I see around me here is the way our grandfathers and great-grandfathers must have lived. Only men are at workplace; women stay at home with babies and the society of other women in the family or neighbourhood, the families living cheek by yowl and sometimes under the same roof, the houses all open to catch any passing breeze, the life basically outdoors, the distances between houses minimal and social exchange therefore constant and easy. The gravel road that services the little waterside community serves more to unite than to separate. Young boys come down to be with the men and learn from them. Our boys never see their dads at work (well, my kids saw me on the stage or singing, but never when I worked at the bank; I only rarely visited my own Dad at his place of business). The men work in long hours or in bursts of long hours and then hang around the rest of the time. The work day is irregular and can be long or short and always out-of-doors. Nobody seems stressed. When they ask me about working in Canada they mention not only the extreme cold but the constant stress of long working hours plus commuting to earn your bread, not seeing your family or friends during the day, etc. The idea of big bucks might be appealing, but you can easily see by their eyes and their pitying faces that they wonder people want to exist like that instead of living here beside the water with their families, neighbours and friends.