Day 128, Year 4: Teamwork
Date: Friday, February 27, 2009
Weather: Sunny and Hot
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

On the day after the BIG day, I’d like to reflect a bit on the teamwork we have observed with Oh’s crew. Almost everyone we talk to has tales of woe about having work done here in Thailand. We have been told time and again to stay with the boat at all times while work is happening. When the boss is not around, evidently a lot of workers simply don’t work. But we have had the total opposite experience. Oh only visited Windbird once or twice a day for short periods to check on things from the beginning. He has a young site manager named Luck who does a fantastic job and not once have we ever seen any of the crew sitting idle. They start work at 8:30 am, sometimes have a short morning break, an hour lunch break, wind down around 5 pm, clean up, and leave at 5:30. Every single member of the team seems to have amazing attention to detail so that even the Queen of Detail (that’s me) can’t find fault. We feel blessed to have happened upon such a great team. Of course, it will be years before we know if the job holds up under the pressure of time, but from all appearances, the quality of work is topnotch. Somehow Oh, at thirty-three, has put together a fantastic team and we feel blessed to have happened upon them.

We did have one little hitch with yesterday’s paint job. Late last evening we walked over just to take one more look and I found a sag in the paint about a foot above the muffler on the stern of the boat. The rest of the paint job looked so good that we weren’t really upset by this. But we did want to find out what the right thing to do about it might be. There are various opinions from having the paint job done again to leaving it alone or to lightly rubbing it out and polishing over the spot. When we talked to Luck and Pong this morning, they said no problem. They could rub it out easily, but we were worried about compromising the paint in that area. We called Oh and he said he would discuss this with us when he arrived later in the day. But by the time we did our second visit of the day, Luck and Pong had made the sag ‘magically’ disappear. Luck, with a great smile, and his best English, indicated that it just went away. He and Pong were obviously proud of the disappearing act and we are fine with what they did. The crew spent all of today taking tape off and masking off for the painting of the green stripes. The taping took longer than expected due to their absolute attention to detail. They measured, they eyed up close and from afar, they applied tape, and then took it off and reapplied. Windbird now sits ready for the green stripe painting which will happen tomorrow. So we are still one more day away from Windbird looking like her old self again.

Tonight we went to Neil and Ley’s rental home just up the highway from the Boat Lagoon. They also invited Bud and Nita of Passage, a boat from Honolulu that has been on the hard here since long before we arrived. We only met this couple yesterday as Nita has been out of commission having a knee operation, but she is mending quickly and we had a wonderful time tonight getting to know one another. It is always fun to talk to other cruisers having the same experiences, so we shared experiences about having our boats painted and refit here at the Boat Lagoon. Ley and Neil took us to one of their favorite restaurants. The food was fantastic and Ley had fun holding the resident bunny that she has come to know. We hope to spend more time getting to know Bud and Nita of Passage and Ley and Neil of Crystal Blues.

090227 Day 128 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Next Step, Getting Ready for Green Accent Stripes