Today’s Win: Getting Parts From DHL

Mechanics on the boat, working.  Engine all put together and ready to start.  It seems like a great way to start a happy and positive story, but once we tried the engine didn’t start.  This was over a week ago.  Several of us asked the mechanic if we needed to get parts order for the engine then, so we didn’t have to wait and wait and wait.  No, we can find the parts in Panama.  No need to order more parts.

Wait…except you cannot always find the important parts needed in Panama (or wherever you are), but you can call the same company you have been using for the last five years…and they have the parts and can drop ship them fast.  So after another fruitless search for parts in Panama, we indeed needed to order crucial engine parts from the US.  So again I placed another rush order with my favorite diesel expert at Transatlantic Diesel (she knows me by name).  The order left Virginia on a Thursday and made it to Panama by the next day, Friday.  In looking at our tracking # online, the part would take another week to get from Panama City over to Colon across the isthmus.  Hmmm…another week sitting and waiting on parts with no engine work happening on the boat.  Ummmm….nopesters, I needed to get the part so we can get work going on Tulum.  So I rustled up my favorite van driver and we took off to Panama City to grab our parts.  Sure enough, after finding DHL Panama and paying the duty/import fees on the parts, I had them.  Now we just needed to get the mechanics to knock the work out and we would soon have a working engine again!

So the moral of the story isn’t anything negative.  The moral of the story is that sometimes you need to get parts ordered fast and then know where those parts are…and how to get them to where they need to go in order to get the boat fixed.  For us, we’re pending a boat sale, so we want the engine fixed correctly and quickly so we can get the sale finished and get the new owner onto the boat.  We are indeed moving onto a new adventure and really looking forward to it, as soon as the boat sells, as soon as the engine gets fixed.  Thus is life, there is a rhythm to it that ebbs and flows.  We’re flowing with it.