Departure Preparations Completed - Almost

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Fri 29 Jan 2016 22:05

Position: At anchor Bahia San Lucas
Wind: variable
Sea: smooth Swell: negligible
Weather: sunny, warm

With Sylph stored and watered, today's mission was to complete the clearing out procedures. All went well with the Mexican paper chase, relatively painless. First stop I went to the Port Captain's office where I was told that first I must go to immigration, then to API (something to do with fisheries) to get a form saying that I did not owe the any money, then back to the Port Captain's office by two o'clock (they close at two thirty) to get the final authorisation to leave. It was quite a bit of walking around, not made any easier by carrying a backpack around with a heavy lump of zinc in it (I realised at the last moment that I did not have any zinc anodes on board – they need replacing when I haul out at Apataki). I got everything completed and was back at the Port Captain's office at about one o'clock where after a significant wait the man behind the counter told me I could not leave because in the Port Captain's opinion the waves were too big and it was not safe for me to leave. Excuse me? Initially I was really quite angry that a desk bound bureaucrat was telling me whether it was safe for me to leave port or not, but after I had remonstrated and realised that it was not going to make any difference I resigned myself and found the whole situation highly amusing. Unfortunately the Port Captain's office is closed on the weekend and as luck would have it Monday is a public holiday, so the earliest I am going to get away is Tuesday. I have just looked at the weather for Tuesday and it looks like it will be even worse then. Bother!

I left the building shaking my head and laughing at how ridiculous it all was, walked to the bank to withdraw some pesos to fund the next few days, thence to a nearby restaurant with free internet access where I spent some of the fresh pesos on a glass of vino roho to accompany my contemplation of the Tao.

All is well.