Back to Blue

After our little setback with the wrong, boat-dissolving antifoul, we're now back on track to transit the canal starting tomorrow afternoon.  The marina made a huge cock-up putting on the wrong stuff, but some people say that's it's how a company copes with mistakes that defines them, and on that score they have been exemplery.  Things they did right include:

-  immediately owning up to the problem, admitting it was their fault and commiting to put it right.  The could have tried to push us into just 'hoping for the best' or perhaps getting it fixed in Panama City - or even just putting the cans in the bin (I wouldn't have been able to tell without them), but they didn't - they commited to fix the problem themselves.

-  Having the marina manager, Juan, come to boat with apologies as soon as possible to retiterate the above.  He also appeared several times over the 2 days to check on progress

-  Putting a large workforce onto the problem from 7:30am the next morning.  They had not tried to remove 2 fresh coats of antifouling before, so it took a couple of hours before they got the technique sorted.  They worked really hard until it got dark by which time they had got rid of the wrong antifouling, sanded the bottom to a fair finish applied a coat of epoxy primer and 1 coat of new antifoul

-  Finishing the repair job ahead of the promised time - we were in the water and on our pontoon by 4:00pm today.

The workers....and me

Clean, blue and ready to go

So great effort by the Marina staff....but it just would have been better for everyone if hadn't been necessary.