The Sickness that Faded Away

In our dreams it faded away. Covid, damned Covid. During the last year and a-half we have all tried our level best to bargain it away, to no avail.  Tiny polynucleotide chains of malign logic that barely qualify as forms of life care not one whit about our sick-and-tired-of-it feelings. 

Tired though we may be, and faded though it may not yet be, it was time.  Back to Mexico time: time to reassemble the boat, put her in the water and to make wakes.  So that is what we are doing.  Two heavy bags and one large box of “boat jewelry” were hauled to the airport with optimistic ideas of installing it all once we were here.  Bits and pieces and parts; all of them with an important purpose and a place to be. Eight-days later, we wait optimistically to see those bags. Our mistake was to listen to the Aeromexico staff who three times told us we didn’t need to pick them up in Mexico City and walk them through Aduanas (Customs).  The folks at Aduanas had other ideas and seized the whole lot.  It took 6 days to make the arrangements with Aduanas to pay a 1900 peso tax for the release of the bags from Aduanas jail.  With that incredibly frustrating process of bureaucratic communication behind us, it is now 2 days and counting for Aeromexico to send us the released bags.  We have taken to showing up at the Tapachula airport to meet each flight, hoping vainly that we’ll finally get lucky. It sounds like a stupid strategy, but the real reason is to make the staff at the Aeromexico counter start feeling so stupid and guilty that they do whatever is required to find the damned bags and reunite us with them. We hate driving at night in Mexico, but tonight at 10pm it’s gonna be off to airport again.

Covid here has changed a lot of things.  Going inside stores means to mask up, no exceptions. There are often disinfectant mats to walk through, and of course, hand gel.  Quite often an attendant takes your temperature as a condition of access. All-in-all, though the customs are slightly different, we would say that the Mexican people are at least as Covid protocol compliant as back in Vancouver.

For the first week here we stayed at the lovely Casona Maya Mexicana, a gorgeous little boutique property that serves as our downtown oasis.  The hotel is literally stuffed full of art, each room themed. Step outside the hotel and things are not so pretty.  The situation with the Honduran and Haitian migrants is terrible.  Mexican authorities are trying to get all migrants to acquire documents in Tapachula that approve their onward travel across Mexico. There is a continuous stream of impoverished migrants in this town.  We see them traveling on the streets with their families, often with babes in arms and a few sorry possessions. Authorities have closed off the park square two blocks from our hotel to keep them from camping there.   The streets surrounding the main square are full of garbage and with migrants sitting in doorways.   Each morning on the road from Tapachula to the boat we see hundreds of migrants lined up at the stadium (why the lineup is unknown to us but it sure doesn’t look like a fun lineup to be in).  We would like to do a car trip inland for a week, but both the CoVid and migrant situation may make it unwise.

Meanwhile, there is still work to do on the boat (though the lack of parts to install has hindered progress).  Luckily, a few smaller, lighter parts were in our carried luggage. This has allowed Greg to make some progress on the repair of our hydraulic backstay and to complete a new battery charger control head installation. But a boat laid up for 1-1/2 years is inevitably a dirty mess, especially on the outside. Protective tarps have to be removed, followed by a plenitude of scraping and cleaning!  This year we have bottom work to do (sand off the old bottom paint and put on new), a keel that needs grinding back to bare lead and then re-epoxied, a rudder to put back in the boat, a new solar panel installation, and a whole lot of other stuff too. We started with a prayer for it to be done in two weeks, knowing that schedule to be an optimistic pipe dream. It will take three or four.  All of it is hot, muggy work in the boat yard. The rainy season is not yet finished and the heat and humidity is brutal.  

We installed a small air conditioner in the companionway before we left the boat in March 2020 and it ran the whole time we were away, keeping the cabin temperatures down and the humidity at bay. So, the inside of the boat fared well.  No mold and mildew this year. The bonus is that while we complete our chores we now have an air-conditioner running and temperatures inside the boat are almost tolerable. But for the poor boat yard workers hired to sand the bottom of the boat there is no relief. Sanding the bottom paint is a miserable job that we have guiltily contracted out, feeling entirely like the entitled yacht owners that I guess we are.

Our cruising plan this year is loose, but it is a northward plan.  Covid has taken some of the steam out of our thirst for cruising adventure. Boat troubles experienced here are far away troubles and ordinary small boat maintenance problems become mighty headaches.  This winter our plan is to get the boat closer to home. Thus, we will be retracing a coast we have already seen.  Bays and villages we dimly remember from our journey south 3 years ago will be revisited.  We hope to be welcomed in those villages but will certainly understand the fears of people if we are not.  In the small fishing villages of Mexico, we doubt that people living there will have had much access to vaccines.  Hospitals are distant by road and even more distant by way of poverty. They may rightly fear Covid infecting their village and we expect to not be welcome in some of those places.  If asked, we will up our hook and leave with a “no hay problema”.  Northward bound we have miles and miles to go. Where we will end up at Winter’s end we do not yet know.  If we get that far, maybe it will be home.  And if so, that will not be a bad fate to suffer: the summer waters of BC are lovely indeed.

Greg & Alice

p.s. On the 11th day we were reunited with our luggage. 😊 The helpers who finally reunited us with our bags received a very nice bottle of tequila each.

After 18 months of Covid weirdness, we return to our boat in Chiapas, Mexico.

Masks and passport but nothing else required to enter Mexico.

Still standing in the yard in Puerto Chiapas.

The temporary installation of AC kept things from melting down below.

A bit dirty.

We returned, for the 4th time, to the lovely Casa Maya Mexicana in Tapachula.   The owner has owned the hotel for 17 years and collects the art from art auctions in Mexico City, jailhouse artists, and every imaginable source.   

Our room was the impressive Frida Kahlo room.

Tempting pool at the Casa but unfortunately none of our luggage made it out of Mexico City so I was short a bathing suit.    Also, all work and no play when prepping a boat for launch.

Lots of boat work but we enjoyed a few lunches at the splendid Bao Restaurant in the Marina complex.   The salsa is always prepared fresh at our table and we choose the peppers and spiciness.

Up high on the yard.

Puerto Chiapas

Argh!    The weather forecast looks horrid.    It is terrible hot and humid until 5:00 PM and then the rain hits .

Chaos reigns.

After a week we moved out of the artsy boutique hotel to a $13 CDN a night room with shared kitchen in Puerto Madero.    AC works great but the refrigerador esta roto.

Sunset in Puerto Madero.  Not much beach as a rock wall has been built to protect the town from the ocean waves.

Mexico launched a program in 2001 to designate special towns as 'Pueblo Magico'.   There doesn't seem to be a magical program for maintenance of the signs.

El gato esta en mi carro.

A break from boat work.   Lunch at Playa Linda.

OMG!   After 11 days the bags have arrived.  Two Aeromexico staff finally rose to the challenge of securing the jailed bags.

Dinner in Puerto Madero

Tortillas with chicken

Finally, bathing suit has arrived after 11 days, and I can enjoy the Marina pool.

Grinding

On day 7 of sanding the bottom.   Miserable messy hot job.   Glad we have hired help.

Greg became an amateur welder during Covid times and fabricated the mounting braces for our new solar panels. Installation in progress.