BB#5: Bepo the Magician

17/8/10

The next morning we motored round to the slipway and true to his word, Bepo was waiting, ready to perform his magic on the sail-drive the moment we were lifted out of the water. We soon bore witness to precisely how this was to be done.

It was no single-handed feat, even though Bepo, the Master, did perform the hands-on tinkering himself - all done standing on an upturned bucket so he could reach the offending “leg”, a couple of metres off the ground. Four young ‘theatre-assistants’ ably assisted the operation with surgical precision – “scalpel”, for pass the spanner, “sponge” to mop up the gear oil, “kidney dish”, to receive each nut or bolt….. and so forth, until he was right inside the guts of it.

The lackeys knew exactly which tool to pass and when, which part to race off with to clean, which chunk of wood to wedge against the hull for leverage. At one stage of the game, one of them was a second too slow as Bepo blindly waved a tube of grease in the direction where a hand should have been to take it. Without missing a beat he tossed it to the ground to be later scooped up by the humble slacker. It was a real circus, one that would never be seen in Australia.

A cast of thousands seemed to appear out of nowhere - spectators, running commentators, (speaking in Croatian, so not sure), casual passer-by’s, even a couple of motorcyclists rode up and parked beneath the boat to observe the Master at work. The clock was ticking, but Bepo still found time to answer his mobile phone, which seemed to ring every few minutes.

After the half hour ticked by, the yard-men returned. We thought they might start pressuring us to either get back in the water, or move off the travel-lift, but they seemed content to watch too, laughing at Bepo’s phone with its odd ring tone, jostling each other, swinging off the crossbars of the travel-lift, all seemingly complicit in the game. One of them gave us a nod to walk slowly up to the office to pay, adding “one lift”. We smiled gratefully.

We paid 350 Euro for one lift out of the water and back, instead of 700. We guessed the trainee grease-monkeys would only be paid peanuts, but the 150 Euro labour bill either rewarded Bepo handsomely or was spread amongst them.

All things considered, we got off rather lightly. Best of all, we were back in action without having missed a beat. Maria had taken the bus to Split for the day, and we were ready to head there to pick her up in the afternoon.

And just as there had been the pressure in Slovenia of being up and running for Maria’s arrival, so too we were chewing our nails a little over the imminent arrival of our new boat guests, Ian (Wishy) and Julie, who were flying into Split the next morning.




As it turned out, we were peacefully anchored in Split harbour and they never suspected the tenterhooks we had been on.