My infernal cell phone rang Monday. It was The Commander. “Hey man…guess what the latest victim of the George Bush Administration is?” he said with a snicker.
I knew he was jerking my anchor rode.
“I can’t begin to imagine” I said.
“Boaters World” he continued with a note of incredulity in his voice.
I could tell he had been crying.
After all, (Motor) Boaters World is the closest thing we had down here on the third world-third coast to a marine supply store. Certainly no Wal-Mart of a place like the big West Marine stores up in Kemah, but still, it filled the bill. Now we are in a place where everything must be ordered, or at the very least a road trip to the Blue Water Ships Store, West Marine or Boaters Worlds in Corpus Christi would be in order…..
“ROAD TRIP!” I interjected jubilantly.
The tide of the Commanders’ somber tone turned and he returned to his former optimistic self. “Yea….this could actually be a good thing” he mused.
“After all” I continued, “We have amassed, and are about to amass substantial mitigation credits”. “Right” he agreed. “Hey what’s going on with your shifter cable?” he asked…..
Last Friday I was moving ECII to a new slip due to the fact that the marina is finally getting it’s act together and repairing the Hurricane Dolly damaged infrastructure, the twisted and mangled docks that we have all had to negotiate as obstacle courses since that little chubasco back in July. Personally, I have found the obstacle course of angular planking and general offset to be rather challenging, especially after an evening uptown..
In the process, as I moved the old girl to her new temporary digs, the transmission shift cable, which apparently became bound up at the gear shift end, bent the stainless steel rod, and consequently I was left singlehanded aboard, stuck in forward heading directly for the dock. Fortunately the wind had not yet piped up, and I reached down, killed the engine and drifted rather unceremoniously into the slip, with no subsequent harm to either the boat or the dock.
A couple of days later I called Wes Thom, one of the only boat doctors around and explained the problem. He said he’d send his guy, Manuel over to get the cable number and length. He said that he was “real good”.
So after lunch on Wednesday I met Manuel over at the boat. Manuel is about seventy, and seems to be sort of locked into his own world. Aren’t we all?
I explained the problem, noticing that all he had for in the way of tools was a flat screw driver, and a pair of needle nosed pliers. Wes had told me Manuel would bring all of the necessary tools and a mirror to check in those inaccessible areas for the part number. The first thing that he asked for was a flashlight. I asked him if he had a mirror, and he responded “no”. So, after borrowing a mirror from my neighbor on the Endeavour 37 next door he set to clearing out my carefully organized starboard side locker, tossing folded third world bimini, assorted parts and other items unceremoniously into the cockpit, burrowing down to the locker bottom like a giant gopher. He wedged himself into the space, but decided it was too tight to do anything in. I explained to him that the port side locker has more room, and he could perhaps get to the tranny connection from there. So now he sets about taking off all of my carefully coiled dock lines from their hooks in the port side locker over my protests that I leave them on whenever I stuff my bigass down into that space. Now my cockpit looks like the interior of the marine resale shop up in Houston as he disappears down into that hell hole.
Almost as soon as he goes down there, he re-emerges saying that he needs “things” to work down there.
Great.
By this time I am busy doing the Houdini thing on the starboard side, having gotten my head down there and seeing that the shifter end has numbers, and spying the bent rod in the process.
Once down there I realize I need tools too, maybe I can temporarily fix the thing, so I instruct Manuel to get my tool bag from behind the settee on the port side, down in the house. I hear him rooting around down there, and after an exchange that went something like this:
Me: I need a 3/8” open end wrench and a flat screw driver from that grey canvas bag…
Manuel: I don’t see it….
Me: Where are you looking? Its right there under the tool roll…
Manuel: What tool roll, I don’ see no tool roll…
Me: Where are you looking?
Manuel: In the yellow box on top of the grey bag…..
……We get everything straightened out, and I get the tools. I secure the cable where it had come loose, but according to Manuels’ confused and vague observations and the general feel of the shifter (which I am operating from inside the locker), I determine that I cannot straighten out the rod, and set about disconnecting the cable.
Oh Lord, I need more tools, so I extract myself from the locker, blood streaming down from various lacerations caused by protruding hardware, knife like house clamps and sharp edges, wade through the mess in the cockpit, and as I descend the ladder I see disaster in the interior of El Caribe II….Tools scattered everywhere, bags upside down, cushions askew, a locker door with a broken dog, hell it looks like we just had a serious knockdown, or maybe a hurricane has moved through leaving behind a wake of immolation.
For now though, I just descend down into the bowels of the starboard cockpit locker again, and after some disconnect, the offending cable is free, and Manuel has it in grimy hand. He goes shoreside, stowing the thing in Wes’ truck, returning long enough to throw my (formerly) neatly coiled lines, spare mainsail, washdown bucket, third-world bimini and other assorted gear into the lockers stating that he will “soon be back”, so after all, there’s no sense in putting them back neatly….
In a whirlwind he takes leave and I tiredly remove the mess from the lockers, stowing things back neatly where they belong, before descending back into the house to do likewise, hoping that the re-installation of the cable won’t produce the same results….
| 
