I highly recommend this boatyard for all kinds of work, and here’s why.

Our bow thruster failed with an unearthly shriek and had clearly suffered a major mechanical failure.
The gearbox (the cursed Yanmar KM4A) had started giving intermittent forwards gear along with the usual scary mechanical thumps and bangs underneath that signifies a problem with the drive cone (again).
An ominous rumbling at the start of the season had signaled that a new cutless bearing was in order.
The MaxProp was due to be serviced.

All this (apart from the gearbox) meant a lift was in order and pronto – as always we were under time pressure and had just over a week.

We were in Marina De Santa Cruz anyway so we rode our bikes to the boatyard (20 minutes) to see if they could help.

I explained our plight to Javier (Mendez) who I believe is the manager and were delighted to find that he not only spoke good English but also obviously knew about boats and their problems. This is not always the case with managers. He also re-assured us that everything could be repaired in time and offered to lift the boat the very next day. This was actually too soon as it was Carnival in Santa Cruz and we wanted to see that. He could also arrange to have our liferaft serviced which was something else we needed.

I was also allowed to stay and work on the boat myself which is sometimes not possible. The yard sported toilet and shower facilities which whilst basic were more than sufficient with plenty of hot shower water.

The lift was done carefully and professionally and the boat was placed on substantial metal cradles.

The chief engineer came on board (he could also speak good English) and listened to what we wanted doing. Everything was no problem and he offered to check my work fitting the new bow thruster leg as I was doing this myself. The yard has it’s own engineering company called “Spinnaker” that do the work and can easily get spares – but not a bow thruster leg!

Literally across the road is a major dealer for all the leading brands of marine engines and gearboxes and a quick walk there confirmed (once again in good English) they could repair the gearbox in a couple of days. I was going to remove and re-install that as I’m not completely hopeless!

All the work, and some extra stuff I thought of, was completed within 5 days by very competent engineers and workers. Some could speak a little English, but even those that couldn’t would smile and wave and happily entertain my feeble attempts at Spanish.

The replacement bow thruster leg that was ordered from Spain caused some problems with customs in the Canary islands. It seems that they (Canaries) are independent from Spain and so it needed to be imported which I was completely unable to do. Javier came to the rescue, called a friend of his who deals with importing boat spares and a day later I had confirmation from DHL that it was on it’s way. As far as I can see I was not charged anything for this service; the friend even came to the yard from Santa Cruz to tell me how things were progressing.

As I write this the boat is ready for the water with everything and more done in a friendly and professional way. The bill was under what I expected which was an added bonus.

Things to note:

The yard is quite small, so booking ahead is essential
I should think that 17m is the maximum length they can handle
It’s a little out of town, but a regular (every 20 mins) bus service will take you there or to San Andres with its bars, restaurants and long sandy beach from just outside the marina
It can be noisy as a couple of distribution firms work opposite from about 0600 to 1900
Showers and toilets are adequate and clean, but nothing special
There is a chandlery 5 minutes walk from the yard which sells mainly stuff for the fishing boats, but obviously carries anodes and other regular service items for boats

I can’t recommend this place and it’s staff enough!

John Chandler
SY “Maya”