contents may settle during shipment

She is no longer sitting here on jackstands. As of 9AM this morning, she's on a truck negotiating the Mexican roads between San Carlos and Tucson, AZ.

I'm totally not nervous.

(check out pics from Mexico here including the tasty surprise we found sitting inside the mast when we pulled it out)

goodbye $1.20 beer!

We left San Carlos, MX at 10:00AM Friday morning. We slogged all the way back to Seattle by Saturday night at midnight. Rolled out of the car, stumbled down the dock and fell face first into bed. Woke up 10 hours later to my sister knocking on the door.

The boat is still lying in San Carlos. The driver was sick so they couldn't ship until today. An email today let us know they will absolutely be shipping her tomorrow. This is "Mexico" time so we're not holding our breath. Maybe. Hopefully. Cross your fingers.

Still don't have an ETA when she'll show up in Seattle so I'll just keep my cardiologist on speed dial until she shows up in good condition.

buenos nachos

5AM.

I've slept 30 minutes so far the previous evening and Christy is taking her turn napping on the bow of the boat on a cockpit cushion under a towel in the pouring rain. I'm down below finishing up making the sure that the boom and whisker pole sitting on the floor of the cabin below don't go "walkabout" and destroy all the great woodwork we now have.

The truck is scheduled to arrive at 6AM.

We still haven't:
- pulled the prop
- removed 90 lbs of steel anchors from the bow pulpit
- tied down bimini and dodger frames in a manner that won't trash them or the boat
- finished wrapping the boom and all its accoutrements in a metric ton of shrink wrap
- 100 other tiny little things that need to be done to ship a boat.

I grudgingly woke Christy up because our timeline went from 'Urgent' to 'Oh Shit'. We worked furiously until 6AM.

No truck.

8AM. More work. No truck.

930AM. Oh yeah, the truck driver is sick and can't drive the boat up until maybe Monday.

Awesome.

After a 3 hour nap on the boat, we are in Froggy's down several Coronas and much happier. Back to the boat later when temps go down to deal with all the packing we did a crappy job on during the all-night boat prep marathon.

Boat arrival in Seattle? Can't rightly say. If'n I was a bettin' man, I'd put money on August.

via con huevos

We're still here on the surface of the sun. The signs all say Mexico but I'm not fooled.

The boat? Ours.

The mast? Pulled.

Us? Hot. Tired. Sweaty.

Take care. More updates to follow.

hola!

Here we are in sunny (*really* sunny) San Carlos, Mexico. It's 180 degrees in the shade. We're sitting inside the gringo bar Club de Capitanes finishing up some brilliant ceviche and I don't know how many Negro Modelos.

We spent the morning helping the current owner rig the boat and get it ready for sea trial and survey. Which meant putting on some sails and running the engine up to temperature.

After that we spent the morning photographing everything above decks. Every thing. E-v-e-r-y. Thing. If we ever offer to show pictures of our time in San Carlos: run away. The slideshow will consist 1700 photos of turnbuckles and blocks. Party!

Tomorrow, we meet the surveyor and then head over to Marina Real where the boat is at now. We'll do the sea trial on our way to moving the boat over to Marina San Carlos where we'll haul out and finish the survey. From there, if all things go well, we'll haul the boat over to dry storage and start the Herculean task of prepping the boat for a week of 60 mph winds and Mexican roads and ill-tempered crane operators and blowing dirt and monsoons and kamikaze insects and ninjas. I'm not sure about that last one but the boy scouts said I should always be prepared so we're not taking any chances.

As always, we'll keep you updated.