One of the issues we deal with traveling by boat is: What do you do with a boat when you aren’t on it? Leaving it at anchor seems risky. Best choice is a marina. The problem is finding space. Many are full with waiting lists. My recent experience has been that a marina may or may not respond to an email. What’s the point if you have a waiting list after all? The government-run marina in the city of Guaymas (pop. 140,000 +) is a small marina and we didn’t have any expectation of finding a spot when we sent a WhatsApp message to the marina office. (we got the number from a friend of a friend). We had two requests, marina space for a week or so, and a brief haul-out to fix a problem. I was pleasantly surprised when Eduardo, the manager, replied and indicated there was a marina slip available to leave the boat for a week or so while we go tour the Copper Canyon and a haul-out could be accommodated in their work yard.
We moved the boat into a marina slip and left for the Copper Canyon. We came back to a happy and safe boat and prepped for a haul-out! Why, you might ask, did we need a haul-out? Island Summers is an absolute marvel of compactness and self-sufficiency but because of that self-sufficiency everything that we take for granted at home (electricity, water, waste disposal) is our responsibility. Island Summers has a couple of waste holding tanks with big dump valves at the bottom. Far offshore – open the valve, empty the tanks. Both valves had failed OPEN. In a marina or harbor this is unacceptable so we thought we’d replace the valves below the waterline with a quick haul-out.
“On-The-Hard” is what boaters refer to when a boat is out of the water held up on stands. Suddenly the marvel of self-sufficiency becomes anything but that. All the sink drains just drain on the ground. Without water, the motor can’t be run to heat the hot water tank or charge the batteries. Worst, the toilets are what need fixing so they are un-usable, (unless you want that on the ground under the boat). Any trip on and off the boat requires climbing the ladder, including a late-night trip to the loo. For reference see in the photo above, the boat is up as high as the street lights so it was a steep climb on the wobbly 12- foot extension ladder on and off the boat. No fun since this was our living conditions for 4 days! Yes, we stayed on the boat during the repair.
Happily, with 4 days of hard work of grinding and cutting and a minimum of international shipping, Kevin was able to replace the bronze valves with marelon (a marine grade composite) and splash Island Summers back into the sea. His severely scratched up hands will heal in a week or so.
With a few days to kill waiting for weather we explored Guaymas. I would NOT describe Guaymas as a tourist destination, but since it’s only about 250-miles from Phoenix, it’s got a fairly large expat community. The central part of the city was a short walk from the marina. The main streets are full of taco, churro, hot dog, juice and donut carts and all kinds of little family run shops. On Wednesdays they have a public market with even more shops lining the streets. Everything is on display, clothing, fresh produce, fruit snacks, swap-meet style used tools. They even had live chickens with one leg tied to a table leg so they couldn’t run away 🙁 We picked up some fresh fruit, a big package of shrimp for later and a tool that Kevin had been looking for (hello 1/4 inch rachet!). No, we did not buy a live chicken!
While we were in Guaymas, new cruiser friends Brian and Sharon on S/V Music 4 showed us around town including a custom T-shirt (playerias) shop. We got some nice polo shirts with our boat logo on them. Pretty cool and not too expensive. On our walk back to the boat we saw a barber shop where Kevin got a perfectly fine hair cut for 80 pesos ($4 USD). Not everything feels like a great deal in Mexico but sometimes there are pleasant surprises!
We’re crossing the Sea of Cortez on the way to Bahia Concion. It’s a lightly overcast, warm day and we can see mountains 40 nm ahead. It’s glorious!
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