Bucher Goes to Work

From letters dated April 4 and April 25, 1954

Our stay here in British Honduras is lengthening. We came down for two or three months; now it looks as if it could be six or eight. Bucher feels that there are fine possibilities, and while everything is slow starting (why do today what can be put off till tomorrow seems to be everyone’s motto), he finally is beginning to see some progress.

He was not able to start building his big cruising-racing sailboats because the man he wanted to supervise the actual work has his ways tied up. So instead, he has taken over operation of the Colony’s only wood-working factory, on a percentage basis, and is making jalousied doors and windows, picture frames, water skis, small skiffs, and a lot of other odds and ends.

The main trouble has been reorganizing the factory. There must have been $100,000 worth of excellent machinery, some of it never used in the five years since its purchase, and none of it ever oiled, greased, or sharpened. Furthermore, when he set out to clean the factory, Bucher found several thousand dollars worth of tools and small machines literally buried under piles of junk and sawdust. By the end of last month, however, he had the factory overhauled, began production on some back orders, and started feeling encouraged about the machinery and the men.

The idea of a production line of any sort was completely unheard of. Each man built completely whatever he was working on…like a cabinet maker. Now Bucher is turning out ten and twenty times as many articles in the length of time it used to take to do one.

In the mean time, the children and I are having a lovely, lazy life. We couldn’t find a house anywhere, and were lucky enough to be able to rent the only one now being built in Belize City. It should have been finished a month or six weeks ago, but I won’t guarantee that we’ll be in this week! It is hideously expensive living in the hotel, of course, though it is very plush.

 

From letter dated February 21, 1956

Bucher is getting on nicely with his boat building and is setting up a production line on a 16-foot open fishing boat, hoping to be able to ship more than one a week. And meanwhile the sport-fishing company has started fishing commercially and is shipping to Guatemala.