Anduril Sailing Blog: January 2019

Twelve hot, hard-working days in on our return to southern Mexico and the light of tunnel’s end shines large. In a few hours we will depart for El Salvador. The boat worker’s adage “take your work hours estimate and double it” has proven true this year or worse. Nine months of storage in tropical heat has done its inevitable damage to everything rubber or plastic on board. We won’t bore you with the particulars, but we can tell you that remedy has involved an insufficiency of technical Spanish during numerous trips to at least five local Tapachula Ferreterias (hardware stores). And a whole lot of sweaty effort too. Imagine yourself scrunched up, nearly upside down, in an aft compartment (sized for a ten year old) working wrenches at impossible angles in 40C heat, sweat dipping in your eyes, all the while your knuckles are bleeding because the wrench keeps slipping explosively off the nut – bang and ouch!

Yet bruises remind us of being alive. This year we are especially mindful of those who are now gone, ranging from close to distant, each passing life sounding as a gong on the heart of us still living. The list of loss over the past nine months includes 6 lovely people who deserve naming: Gordon Henderson (84, mentor sailor figure), Corey Dean (63, golfing buddy), Maya Whitehead (29, life cut too short), Art Harms (90, farewell father), Carol Abernethy (68, sister how we now miss you), and John Harms (63, cousin gone). We mention not those whose health this year has brought us close to fear of further losses. Were we religious we would make thankful signs of cross. Being not religious, we breathe and are thankful all the same.

Tapachula is very near the Guatemalan border and the entry point into Mexico for the indigent and desperate migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua that have been caravanning northward to the USA, thus posturing themselves as fodder in the current cultural-political wars of so called America. There are refugee camps and migrant centres here, with lots of military and police presence on all the roadways. As with all that passes as normal hereabouts, we gringos are largely ignored. Safety has never been a concern for us in Mexico, but considering how far south we have travelled we are definitely out of the protective aura of the tourist zone. With the boat both seaworthy and provisioned we are waiting for the inspection dog before we clear port and head for Bahia Del Sol, El Salvador, a +/- 40 hour passage.

Clearing out is a 24 hour process, more or less, with some patience required. We presented ourselves yesterday at the dock office at 9am the day before departure, various documents in hand. The marina manager then drove us to the Officina de el Capitan del Puerto, the Officina de Customs, and the Officina de Immigrationne where we scheduled the mandatory pre-departure inspection (at our appointed hour of departure - with sniffer dog) and finally back to the port captain. At each location there were formalities and paperwork issued - with stamps! At the port captain’s office, after an hour of work on their part making various enquiries as to whether we had been of good behaviour while in Mexico, the stamped Zarpe exit papers were issued. Two hours from now the Marinas will come wearing camouflage uniforms and with their sniffer dog to declare us contraband free. We will then have 15 minutes to depart. Apparently, if we take too long the whole process starts over. Last year the sniffer dog seemed friendly though. May said dogs never become angry (or whatever sniffer dogs do to unlucky or stupid tourists).

So that’s it for now. When we head for sea we will look out for bow surfing dolphins or other sea creatures. Each will be named in turn and anointed by small libation as the passing spirit of one of life’s loves lost.

Greg & Alice