I'd rather be lucky...

If you plan to fly down for a final day of work on a boat in Ensenada and you have the "opportunity" for a strange hydraulic problem, it's REALLY nice when the friend who goes along just HAPPENS to be a hydraulic engineer!
Russell Vinton flew down with me yesterday for the final day of work on the boat. We were going to add the final 1500 gallons of fuel and then put the new (to us) dinghy on the boat. We made it over to the fuel dock with no problems and started the multi-hour process of pumping fuel. They had to bring a truck to refill the fuel dock tanks about halfway through!
While that was going on I went over and got the dinghy which was tied up at another boat in the marina. It started up nicely and I puttered back to Antipodes and noticed that there was no lifting harness to attach the dinghy to the crane. After a few tries I got a rope harness put together and adjusted properly. The crane was hooked on and I pushed the "up" button. The crane line tightened....and then stopped.
The crane has always been slow lifting the 250 lb dinghy we used to have. It wouldn't budge the 450 lb new dinghy (even though the crane is rated for 800 lbs). Russell came back and with great understatement noted "That's odd." You think?
After lots of incomprehensible adjustments and tweaks to the hydraulic system, the new dinghy came flying up out of the water onto the boat deck. Just a tad TOO much power. In any event, Russell figured out that the original installation was not done properly and this didn't provide enough hydraulic pressure to the crane. Fortunately, the fix is fairly simple and I have a parts list and diagram for how to fix it....courtesy of the hydraulic engineer who just HAPPENED to be along that day!
About that time the fuel dock got their tanks filled and we were able to finish pumping fuel on board. The swim platform is now level with the water (and I am very thankful for the new deck plate!).
We raced back to Cruiseport, put the boat away, grabbed a taxi to the airport and flew back through Yuma (where the Customs officer didn't notice that Russell's passport had expired!) and then landed safely at Deer Valley just at dusk. Long day!