Slacker's Season 2006-2007 The Adventure Continues
22 October 2006 | San Diego to San Carlos
Well another year of Slacker adventures has begun. We left San Diego Monday, October 2nd with the van "Morrison" overloaded with food and boat parts, and Julie driving "Nick" our Honda Element. As we were unable to find affordable car storage in San Diego we chose to leave Nick in beautiful downtown Yuma. After a quick stop to drop off the car and seeing the sights (very brief stop) we continued on our way to Tucson. If it's Monday, it must be football and we enjoyed the game from the closest sports pub to our motel, Hooters.
Tuesday we made an early (330 a.m.) start for the border. One of the most stressful parts of our trip is always the Aduana (customs) stop at kilometer 21, just south of Nogales. The rules are simple for Mexico; you can bring in boat parts, used, and repair products, duty-free; not including paint and batteries, both of which we do have, which are charged a 40% duty. We have always had good luck with the traditional Mexican "red light/green light", but our luck failed us this time and we came up red. One of the reasons we try to cross so early in the morning is that the Adauna is lightly staffed at that time of the morning, and its cold! We pulled into the inspection lane and started to sweat. The customs officer motioned for Julie to roll down her window and began to question her, and ask her to open the side slide door. A donde vas(where are you going)? Drugas (drugs)? Guns (guns)? Que es esto? What's in all those boxes? Why officer, we have a small boat in San Carlos and we are going down for a little sailing and relaxation, nothing more. Cuanto cuesta? What did you pay for all of that stuff? Officer, all of that stuff is used boat parts as we can not afford new, and some clothes for the poor (us). About that time another car pulls into the inspection lane with even more junk than we had. The officer quickly abandoned the questions and waved us through. WHEW! San Carlos here we come.
After a lovely driver through the desert we arrived in San Carlos. Driving down the main street of San Carlos one might easily confuse it with any town in Arizona. The Arizona license plates easily outnumber any other and their unique style of driving is readily apparent. Mexicans fear the "Zonie" drivers!
Our usual accommodations in San Carlos are at the famous "Gringo Pete's Pink Palace. The motel/condo was built by Pete several decades ago and is now run by his son "Jesse". Jesse was born and raised in Guaymas and while looking like your average white guy he is definitely part of the part of the younger party crowd. He is a great guy and very nice to us cruisers.
We got to the dry yard that afternoon and Slacker was already in the work area, her bottom cleaned and ready for the new paint we brought "smuggled" down. The interior of the boat was fine, dusty , dry, and filled with all the stuff that's supposed to be on the outside, but good nonetheless. The guys got started on the paint the next day. On day two we were looking at record time in the yard and to be in the water on Fri. or Sat. No such luck! It seems one of the cans of paint we brought down with us was bad. They were both bought at the same time and same kind of paint, Pettit's Trinidad Pro. Unfortunately for us, it was not apparent until they tried to do a third coat, and the paint started to bubble and crack. The yard guy caught it right away but unfortunately it was part of the 2nd coat that was bad, not the 3rd coat he was applying, so back they go to scraping the entire 2nd coat off. What a mess!!! The good news is that the Jesus and his guys at the yard were great. They got it all done and we were in the water on Tues. A quick motor over to Marina Real and we are in slip for one month. I think we got the last slip available. We are in a 34 ft slip with about one foot between us and the other boat. When our month is up we are going to have to use some Crisco to get us out of the slip. San Carlos is getting so busy with weekend people from Arizona, and a lot of cruisers leaving their boats on the water instead of hauling out. I am kind of glad this will be our last time in San Carlos it is just too hard to get into the water and get a slip. We are busy getting projects done here, along with having some fun too. We put in two new batteries and a new extra fuel tank, an inspection port in the water tank and a new Tank Tender unit to tell us how much fuel and water we have. Mike has been in every locker and cupboard getting stuff installed, and varnish week is soon in my future. So this cruising stuff is not all fun and games. (Ok yes it is! we just throw in a little work so we can say we got something done in the day!)
All our best to you, and we will keep in touch. Check on this site for Slacker updates!
Love Ya
Julie and Mike