I stretched my three free days at Coronado Cays Yacht Club into four to sync with three days of free anchorage at La Playa Cove just inside Shelter Island. That didn't start until Friday and free moorings are an essential part of a cruiser's budget plan. Departing again with my buddy boat from Chula Vista YC, I headed back out and reversing my tour along the industrial part of San Diego Bay.

This time I had my camera out, planning to take pictures of the many unusual craft I'd seen on the way in. There was another MLP under construction at NASSCO, similar to the one I'd seen at Blake Island in Seattle and off Camp Pendleton on the way to Oceanside, but this one had structure spanning the gap between the high bow and high stern. It looks like an ocean-going freeway overpass.



NASSCO also had a littoral combat ship in dry dock, a huge trimaran hulled fighting ship. My understanding is that it's supposed to be manned by a relatively small crew and outfitted ad hoc for different missions as required. I wonder if it's as fast as it looks.

There was also some sort of experimental, four-legged SWATH (small water plane area, twin hull) character parked under the Coronado bridge and not far away a new looking, high-speed aluminum catamaran transport ship. As I took pictures of that thing, the Navy Seals whizzed by in one of their go fast boats.

In contrast, the super yacht M5 was moored next to the San Diego Convention Center. Originally built as the Mirabella V, she's the largest sloop rigged (single masted) sail boat ever built.

Getting back up to the Shelter Island area was important to simplifying access to the upcoming Baja Ha-Ha events. I wanted to attend a couple of radio seminars that were being held and participate in the Ha-Ha barbecue and crew party.

The biggest item on my departure todo list was to finalize my paperwork to get the crew and the boat into Mexico. Last year some well-intentioned bureaucrat had attempted to clean up their process, but the effort led to the biggest SNAFU in Ha-Ha history. I won't throw out numbers because I don't know them, but there were many boats that went down to Mexico last year, including Ha-Ha-ers, that got impounded by the authorities because they didn't have the new eyes dotted and tees crossed. Everyone, including the Ha-Ha organizers, was gun shy about a recurrence. Ha-Ha announcements were warning us away from attempting our paperwork while things were being clarified.

Confusion persisted right down to the last minute, eventually advising only that things were still screwed up, but that anyone who exhibited good intentions needn't worry about problems with the officials. The long poles in the tent of Mexican paperwork were the visas for captain and crew and the Temporary Import Permit (TIP) for the boat.

The visa process was all on line, but was only in Spanish and, even for Spanish speakers, the forms were confusing. I got on line at the Point Loma library and waded through them where I could print out copies of everything. The TIP was more problematic. With the persisting advice to delay, there was now less time left before departure than the process was predicted to take. In desperation, I called the Mexican Tourist Board for advice and eventually decided on a plan to drive to the border crossing at Otay Mesa to apply for and buy my TIP.

As far as I know, no one had considered this an option, even the Mexican authorities advising the Ha-Ha organizers. I teamed up with Sherri off of Spring Fever to make the trip, she with her fluent Spanish and I with Dave's truck. It was a bit of an adventure in finding one's way with only verbal instructions, a paucity of street signs, and no map, but we made it and we flew through the process in fifteen minutes with amazing smoothicity. We felt like heroes back in San Diego where we shared our tale of success with dubious, but amazed Ha-Ha-ers. There was more than one boat captain who followed our bread crumbs.

With that I finally had all my paperwork in order and assembled it in a three-ring binder with separator sleeves to keep it all neat and clean: TIP, US and Washington State boat registrations, international boat insurance, Mexican liability insurance, my passport, my crew's visas and a crew list, dinghy manufacturer's point of origin documentation, the station license for my radio, the prescriptions for my offshore first aid kit, and extensive documentation for my living trust that shows that my estate trusts me to take Mabrouka into Mexico. It was quite an effort.