HOTSPUR officially (Tuesday - March 30, 2010)

Changing the name of our Tartan TOCK to ‘Hotspur’ was a big deal to the Faulkner family. We wanted a decent job done of it but we wanted to keep it fairly simple and affordable. We hired a company here in Mazatlan based on a reference. Mario with Infacto Visual speaks only Spanish and speaking Spanish on the phone can be a very cumbersome experience for me and whoever is on the other line. I don’t know if it was my Spanish or if Mario is just not a punctual person, but I had just about given up on old Mario. He had stood me up twice already, but I was persistent and very polite. We had gotten through the documentation dilemma which took three months. I decided this was going to be a piece of cake!

Two weeks after the initial appointment, Mario finally makes an appearance and takes a look at the boat and my design for a new decal that I have saved on my computer. I’m happy because two weeks is not three months! I ask Mario if he wants me to email the design to him and he declines. To my disappointment, he takes a photo of my boat name design with his cell phone. I was sure that the quality would be lacking. But I kept the stiff smile on my face the whole time. Mario agreed to meet me the following day with a sample. When he showed up early I was surprised. He had the print out on a white paper and he asked me to pick my shade of blue. The quality of the print out was so low the lettering looked blurry... no, furry, but I was moving forward with this assignment regardless. I still smiled.

When Mario arrived the following day he was an hour late and Jim and I had decided he wouldn’t be there at all. We were very happy to see him and he started right to work. He quickly removed the old name on the boat with a metal scraper. After cleaning the area well with cotton wadding and acetone, he carefully eyeballed the positioning and gently applied the decal. It was fabulous! It was my design... only bigger and better... and it looked fantastic! I was genuinely smiling and clapping and I think I might have been jumping, but I’m not sure. Mario adhered the boat name to the starboard and port bow and then added our home port of Olathe, Colorado to the stern. The cost? A mere 520 pesos... roughly $42USD. I figured the quality would be shoddy for that price and with a photo taken with a cell phone. I was wrong. Jim and I couldn’t be happier!