Normally I don't let the Mexican Paperwork ChaCha bother me but yesterday really ticked me off! Mirador is anchored in Sweetpea Cove on Isla San Marcos, about 10 miles SE of Santa Rosalia on the Baja peninsula. I arrived here on October 28 after a 72 mile motorboat ride from Bahia San Francisquito.
It is another 250 miles to La Paz and Mirador had only about 25 gallons of fuel left onboard. That is good for about 150 miles of motoring and I figure this time of the year I can sail about 50% of the time. But, Mirador does have a weaken rig due to the damage from Hurricane Marty and the problem with the bobstay pulling loose from the bow. So, I want to be able to motor in any wind coming from forward of the beam. Therefore, I decided to take on some diesel in Santa Rosalia.
Traditionally, a boat has been able to pull into Santa Rosalia, notify the Port Captain they are there, take on fuel, and leave without checking in.
My friends from Tackless II and Lady Galadrial put 10 jerry cans aboard Mirador early Wednesday morning and we rode the flood tide over to Santa Rosalia at a nice 8.3 knots. We docked Mirador about noon and the crew took off for town to get groceries and money. As I stepped off the boat three Mexican Navy sailors, two carry assault rifles and the third with a dog, approached me and asked if they could inspect the boat. I said "sure, no problema." Well, it was a problem!
The young sailor who had to fill out the two page questionaire had no idea what the questions meant and didn't speak any English. Now that's odd! This inspection is ONLY done on cruising yachts, all of whom speak english, yet the inspectors don't speak english and the forms are only in Spanish. Anyway, it took 45 minutes, all of it in the cockpit, to fill out the questionaire. Then Sigma, a nice yellow lab, had to sniff around the boat. The sailors were very nice, but it was frustrating spending more time to answer the questions than it would taken to fill the diesel tank.
They said I had to check in with the port captain. That meant I had to type out a new dispatcho (exit form) and find my previous dispatcho and it also meant a 15 minute walk to the port captains office. Once there I expected to be told that no checkin was required for fuel pickup. The guy I always deal with did tell me that. However, a woman came running up to the counter from the back of the office and I told me I would have to check in. I explained I was only going to be there for an hour and just needed to take on 50 gallons of diesel. She didn't care - she insisted that I check in.
Which meant I had to walk two blocks back to Migracion and get my old and new crew lists stamped. Then I had to go to API (the people that run the port) and pay them $6.81 for two hours of time at the dock, almost all of which was spent filling out their forms and dealing with the port captain. Then I had to take the stamped crew lists and API form back to the port captain and get a form that I had to take to the bank, a 15 minute walk to yet another part of town where I had to pay $31 for the two hours dealing with their beauracracy.
Since I had now paid $37.81 to park Mirador in Santa Rosalia I decided to stop for lunch. But that was very slow so at 2:20 PM I had to sprint to the Port Captains office because they close at 2:30PM. At the captains place, after they verified I had actually paid the bank $31 I recieved my dispatcho that allowed me to leave Santa Rosalia. But, I had not yet taken on any fuel.
Here are six of the ten slips for the Santa Rosalia
Marina. When a boat needs fuel a pickup truck is parked at the
top of the ramp and a long hose is stuck into the 55 gallon drum
carried it the truck bed. The hose is run down the ramp and out
to the boat in one of the slips. A small hand pump is used to
start the fuel flowing and then it's all gravity after that.
As long I was in Santa Rosalia and had paid to be there, I figured we should fill up with beer and other important items. Ricardo is the dockmaster for the marina and does a great job of helping cruisers. He and I drove out to the beer store to get a case for me, one for Lady G, and one for Tackless. On the way, Ricardo stopped by the dump to empty the four trash barrels from the marina.
The dump is just a rutted trail that runs 50 yards off the highway and then ends in a field where everything is thrown out of the truck. That worked but Ricardo had backed over big boulder and up against another. When we tried to leave the truck couldn't get up and over the boulder in font of the left front tire. So I dug, I pushed, I rocked, and eventually we moved the boulder and then got the truck out of the hole the boulder had been in.
All that just for a beer!
On the way to the beer store we had to pull off the highway because the muffler broke loose from the header pipe. No prolema! Just rip the muffler off and throw it into the ditch! We made a grand entrance back at the marina.
You can read more about Santa Rosalia and see lots more pictures at AUG_23_2002
The trip back to Sweetpea Cove should have been anti-climatic but was actually the high point of the day. The main industry in Santa Rosalia is squid fishing. There are hundreds of pangas that jig for squid several nights a week. Each panga is about 25' long and has a crew of two or three. They shine a bright light over the side and then lower squid jigs over the side that snag the squid as they are brought to the surface. The pangas still perfectly still in the water about 10 yards from each other.
When we left Santa Rosalia about 30 minutes after sunset we all commented that it looked like a small city had been developed on the western shores of Isla San Marcos. Half way across the 10 mile wide channel between the Baja and San Marcos we started running into the squid fleet. I didn't really participate any further in manuevaring Mirador thru the pangas because I was busy running Southbound Net which is the 0200Z (7 PM MST) SSB net for the Sea of Cortez and boats making passage from San Diego south. Every 10 minutes or so I'd look up and see a dozen pangas within 20 yards of Mirador. I constantly heard unfamilar voices saying "Buenas Noches" and "hola", or even worse "como esta usted" (how are you - which means we're close enough they want to have a conversation). Each time I looked up from running the net I could see, literally, hundreds of small boats surrounding Mirador.
I wasn't at all worried because Dennis was standing on the port side, Gwen on the starboard side, and Lisa was behind the wheel. I could hear the two lookouts saying things like "slow down and starboard 10 degrees" or "speed up and straight ahead". I have traveled many thousands of sea miles with these folks and knew they would take good care of Mirador. What I didn't know was that Lisa couldn't figure out how to dis-engage the autopilot. She was just punching in the necessary degrees of course change using the autopilot port and starboard one degree of ten degree course change butttons.
When I am running a radio net I have to write down boat names, locations, weather data, listen for relays, contacts, infos and generally hustle. I had no time to pay attention to my excellent crew. The Southbound Net lasted for 45 minutes as did the panga fleet. We got thru both the net and the fleet with no problems.
The last bit of hilarity occured as we pulled up to Tackless II to let Gwen off Mirador and back onto her boat. As we approached Tackless; Gwen commented that she thought Lady G had been closer to Tackless when we left in the morning. But it was dark and the moon had set. We pulled up to within 10 yards of Tackless when I asked Lisa to illuminate Tackless with my million candle power spotlight.
Whoops - it wasn't Tackless - it was a 50 something foot trawler and there were no lights visible inside. I immediately steered Mirador away from the powerboat, hoping we hadn't disturbed the occupants. Then I heard a loud male voice - "Ahoy - who's there?" - By Gosh - it was Leonard from MV Mirage (shown in the picture above during daylight) who I had cruised the north sea with last year and had seen several times in May in Mazatlan. I hadn't recognized Mirage since the last I knew they were 300 miles south of us in Mazatlan and were not coming north into the Sea of Cortez for either the summer or fall cruising season. We talked on the VHF radio for a while and agreed to meet at a more sociable hour in the morning.
Then there was only one last thing to do - get close enough to each boat, without bumping them, and without tying up to them, while they were anchored, to transfer 10 jerry cans of diesel, ten flimsy bags of groceries, and three people. That did all happen without any problem.
A quick beer and quesedilla and I went to bed.