I have been looking after my friend (from France) Alain’s boat. So I call him French Alain. His boat is a moody 42 footer, nice boat, but it has some serious engine problems right now. While he is away back home in France I am looking after his boat to keep it safe. Two weeks ago he asked me to find a mechanic to start repairing his engine.
I have all love and kindness for my chess partner and of course sailors help sailors, but this was a request that made me a little uncomfortable. I submitted to my friend and agreed to help him despite my reservations. Well… it has not been going well.
I will start this tirade with the opening caveat that I am not an engine mechanic, and although I am a super smart engineer who can fix or build almost anything, I dislike working on engines. I understand the basics of how they work, but they are big greasy dirty and scary and just hell on my nails. So this blog is about things I do not entirely understand, if I say the wrong words or incorrect things please remain calm and forgive me.
Step numero uno for fixing an engine is finding the best professional diesel mechanic that you can. Sounds easy enough but in the DR… it is far from easy. In fact this entire blog is about my failure and frustration in doing so.
This will make the local American Ex-Pats living here really flip their lids and turn on their hate machines for me… but…
The way Dominicans do business is frustrating beyond all measure. See… when you are a white gringo… looking for a mechanic… everybody will suddenly become the best mechanic in the whole world around here…. because you are a rich white person about to open up your bank account for easy picking and they will all want a piece of that.
Here being “qualified” has absolutely no meaning. We white people assume that if someone tells you they are a diesel mechanic they are qualified… like proper training… years of schooling and apprenticeship… working for a legitimate business… and we are all completely wrong in our heads. The word has no meaning in their culture.
So I set out 2 weeks ago to find a qualified professional (a word also with no meaning here) diesel mechanic to help my friend Alain get his boat engine fixed. It is very broken and I know will be a major job to repair. I am highly motivated to do well for my friend. BUT…. what the hell do I know about finding a Dominican mechanic…? Nothing… and I don’t speak the local language either thus making my task double hard.
So step 1 was to begin asking around to other people… lets see if maybe some other sailor here has used and knows a good trust worthy mechanic. Well that began the collection of horror stories about how messed up these people are… how much they cheat and steal and take advantage of white people here. Money paid for “new” parts never installed… for repair of things that never needed fixing… money spent for non-existent shop work… the horrifying list just goes on and on.
My task became more daunting and I started to get discouraged. I suddenly had the idea that I should ask my local friends… ask Dominicans who live here if they know of a mechanic that is professional.. good.. and can be trusted.. who is willing to work on a boat.
There are two guys who work at the immigration building here who speak English whom I am friends with. I have sat and chatted with them many times before just hanging out and chatting about life and the universe for hours. Simon and Mayo are both intelligent articulate wonderful human beings whom I have come to know, so I asked them 2 weeks ago. Simon did not know of any good mechanics but Mayo said there was a guy he knew of who was a properly trained diesel mechanic with a mobile work truck whom the fishermen all use to repair their engines. A great mechanic who can be trusted. His name is Papo(2) (no not the local Papo who does moorings and proclaimed his love for me) and his son named Nairo who live about an hour away in some place called Navarette (forgive me if I got this wrong I don’t exactly remember the town name and cannot find it on the map).
So Mayo said he knew a friend who could get me the number for the guy and we could call him together. I made arrangements to meet Mayo back at the immigration building again the next day and he said he would have the name and number ready for me. It fell thru… Mayo did not even show up. In fact it took me a week of trying everyday to pursue this everyday to FINALLY… (thru a translator) make contact with the mechanic (Papo2) who agreed to meet me at Las Velas last week.
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So last week the son Nairo shows up with some other young helper boy but not the dad Papo2 (who is the professional mechanic I am told I can trust). I find that kind of odd but maybe the son is well trained by his dad, whom the busy father sent to do the initial investigation of the job.
I bring them out to the yacht (Timy) to have a look at the job and see what it entails and to discuss prices ability and costs. So we can see if maybe we can come to some agreement. It is not my engine and not my job and I don’t even know what the job will entail. So lets get a quote and make an assessment.
Nairo has almost no English and my Spanish is marginally better than nothing so we communicate thru google translator. He reassures me… just relax… be calm.. everything is ok.. everything will be fine… we will fix this.. no problem… we will discuss cost later… no worry… we do not know yet how much work it will be until we get into the job to find out what is wrong. Relax Gringa… everything is fine.
I call Alain in Europe on WhatsApp and let him speak directly to the mechanic to get his own sense of this. Alains wife is tri-lingual and fluent in Spanish, so she speaks directly with Nairo. After 10 minutes of jibber jabber I do not understand… Alain tells me it is good… ok let them work. So I do, and they do.
I know very little about diesel engines but the boys seemed to know what they were doing and got to work right away tearing things apart and testing them. Alain did tell me that he knew his Turbo was bad and he had already sent me the replacement he wanted installed… he knew he had injector problems and he had an idea maybe he needed his piston rings replaced.
They worked away for the hot sweaty afternoon while Elena and I waited around cooking in the heat of the day and assisting them whenever they had questions. Nairo seemed to be a good mechanic and seemed to know what he was doing. Norm will tell you these people are very good at taking things apart. Everything seemed to be going well. Nairo confirmed the old turbo was bad… confirmed that an injector was not working… proved that there was salt water getting into one or more of the combustion chambers (which is super bad).
I know very little about repairing a diesel engine but I had a good feeling that everything was well with the world and the boys seemed to be doing a good job. Eventually they removed the cylinder head to expose the cylinders.
I would give more technical details about this but that is not the intention of the blog. Let us suffice it to say work was done… things got taken apart and the boys worked all afternoon.
By dinner time they wanted to take the cylinder head to a machine shop for specialized work to be done on it. My Canadian friend Ken (who is a mechanic I can trust) did warn me this would be necessary. I helped them load it into my dinghy and motored them back to their car at Las Velas and they left. No money had yet exchanged hands and no prices were discussed but work seemed to be getting done. So that seemed good.
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Well the next day Elena and I are walking in town when another French sailor here on a Catamaran beside us approached us and asked if we had hired a mechanic and who. We answered and then Roberto went off. He hired the same guy two months ago to repair his engine… the guy did a terrible job… stole $3600usd from him… charged for non-existent parts… lied and constantly asked for more money more money more money… and the engine did not even work for 30 miles before it completely failed again. He took his case to court and there is a warrant out for Papo2’s arrest. Will I help Roberto setup Papo2 to have him arrested if we can get him to step foot into Luperon…?
OH CRAP…. THIS IS SUPER BAD….
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They have Alain’s cylinder head they can hold for ransom… FUCK..! I screwed up. And I tried so hard for a week to find the “good mechanic” that can be trusted and I still screwed it up. It is so frustrating.
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I contact Nairo and tell him we have to talk. I contact Alain to let him know what is going on. Alain is in favor of giving the kid a chance… do we blame the son for the sins of the father? Sometimes the bad man can still do a good job. There are two sides to every story. Roberto is pretty adamant that Papo2 is a crook… and the courts agreed with him as they ruled in Roberto’s favour and have issued an arrest warrant. Alain says he trusts me and will let me decide what to do but he leans towards let them just finish the job.
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So yesterday I meet Nairo and the kid at Las Velas and sit down to try and work out an agreement using google Translator. Which although I freakin love google translator… it is not perfect and culture does not come thru clearly, it makes many translation errors.
Two and a half hours of negotiating that is the most frustrating experience of my life.
Hey Nairo… your dad did bad… there is an arrest warrant for him
Hey Lexi… we did a good job we are great mechanics Roberto did not want to pay to have the job finished… here are many videos of boat engines we fixed… we have been working in Luperon for 25 years with no problems
OK Nairo.. you seem like a good mechanic how about you and I make an agreement together… not with your dad… but you and me… we need trust…
Ok Lexi I understand.. yes let’s do that
Ok Nairo I am not going to pay you 1 peso until the job is done and the engine is working… then I will pay FAIR price… you trust me.
Ok Lexi I trust no problem… yes I agree to that.. now lets work… just give me $1000usd
Nario what is wrong with you… I just told you no money until the job is done…
Yes I understand Lexi… no problem… but I need to pay the machine shop to get the cylinder head back…
OK Nairo.. go ahead… you pay them with your money and I pay you back when the job is done…
Ok Lexi no problem I understand… I agree… now give me money.
OH FUCKING LORD WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE…!
I am not sure if you are beginning to sense the frustration level dealing with these people. They smile and tell you everything is fine then they completely ignore you and continue trying to extract money out of you completely undeterred by any words or verbal agreements. You can say anything you want, they will say anything that seems to make you calm down and be happy then they completely ignore everything and continue trying to get into your wallet.
Now there is more to this long negotiation of course. He gives me what he says are the bills from the machine shop.. they have no business money to pay the shop with… so if I just give him the $50,000 pesos to pay these machine shop receipts he can get the head back and finish the job then charge the labour at the end.
Much back and forth… Lexi trust me I am not lying to you… but you need to pay the shop costs for the cylinder head so we can continue… if you want we can go to the machine shop together and you can see the work done for yourself and you can pay them directly.
I am a very naive and trusting girl who just wants to believe that everyone is a good person and everyone can be trusted to do their best just like I would. Elena is the cautious one who trusts nobody and she is a much more experienced world traveler than I am. Elena says ok then fine… tell him to bring his car and we go to the shop and we will pay directly.
Then the story starts changing… he has no car… We saw it last time.. oh well it is broken and I cannot fix it… you are a mechanic who cannot fix his own car…? ok borrow one… oh I do not know anybody with a car I can borrow… how do you plan to bring the cylinder head back to the boat… well later when I get money I can buy the parts to fix my car…. now give me money and trust me I will pay the shop.
NOPE… ding ding ding… alarms bells going off everywhere. This is bad. NOPE ain’t gonna do it… I don’t trust you Nairo.
Now the universe can be a funny place… at right about this time another local mechanic named Junior whom the gringos seem to love and trust is standing near by listening in. He speaks English and comes over to help. I ask him to look at the reciepts and talk to this mechanic Nairo and offer me his opinion.
Junior smiles.. says he is reluctant to say anything bad about another mechanic but says he will look. It turns out the receipts are way too high… like padded to double the costs of things… and the big one for $31,000 peso is not a machine shop receipt at all but an estimate to rebuild the fuel pump. Which we never had anything wrong with the fuel pump and does not need fixing.
That’s it… smiling to my face the whole time and the weasely fucker is just lying and trying to steal from me…! I call him on it… oh sorry it must be a mistake by the secretary… yeah right fucker… you have no secretary… you know full well your dad told you to do this… you knew full well the whole time you were slipping a false “receipt” into the pile of papers because you knew full well I cannot read Spanish and probably would not get them translated.
THAT’S IT… NOPE.. WE ARE DONE… I will drive to Santiago myself on Monday and go to the machine shop myself and pay for the cylinder head myself and find another mechanic.
FUCK FUCK FUCK… I FUCKIN HATE DEALING WITH THESE PEOPLE… IT SO SO STRESSFUL… YOU CANNOT TRUST ANY OF THEM… ROB THE GRINGOS IS THEIR NATIONAL ANTHEM.
They have like a national racism against whites here that is actually quite different than the white american racism against black people… but it is still racism. I am no better for painting all Dominicans with the same brush either.
I am trapped far from home in a culture I do not understand… with a language I do not speak… and I am unable to distinguish good from bad anymore…. which is turning me bad… I am losing my faith in the goodness of humanity…
Is Elena right…? All people suck and cannot be trusted..
Can I just go back to Canada where all the good people are please. 🙁
Now Monday I have to find a ride to Santigo to get Alain’s cylinder head back… pay the machine shop… and find a new mechanic that I can trust… to continue the job… but how can I ever know who to trust…? How am I ever going to get this big job finished for my friend? How the hell did I end up in the middle of this? I hate this.. I want out… Poor Alain’s boat is a mess… his engine is in pieces… and I am in the middle.
Cheers sailors
Captain Lexi the very frustrated today….