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| Gilberto & Gustavo stripping varnish |
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| Ready for the trip to dry land |
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| Leaving water behind |
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| Highway boat? |
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| San Carlos Marina Seca ( dry ) |
The days are counting down! We had hoped to "hitch" a ride from someone travelling by car to Tuscon AZ but the weather seems to be keeping people returning to San Carlos waiting in a holding pattern on the other side of the sea. So, we will be travelling by bus on Thursday night (do any of you remember our last bus trip??) to Tuscon AZ where we will be catching a flight to Medford (via Phoenix & Denver). I have been promised that the bus will be luxury ride with movies in English, bathrooms that can be used & best of all seats that really sit up! We also get to skip the every 2 hour inspection routine by the "Federalies". Yahoo.
Well, a lot has happened in the few days since Claudia wrote the above. We're home!!
Preparing a boat for dry storage in San Carlos is a lot more involved than what we had to do to leave Sojourner in La Paz. San Carlos/Guaymas is a lot hotter in Summer, and being a dry (that is, dirt) yard, there were a few new hazards to prepare for. Fine dust that will invade any opening, piece of hardware, or line left exposed. And a new variety of bugs such as scorpions that will crawl into and nest in thru hulls and such. And then there is the heat. We had to be very careful about what we left aboard and where we left it. Things like some canned foods have been known to explode. And, any unsecured food left behind would be a magnet for the bugs.
We had a full boat cover made for IRIE in La Paz which we hope will protect her from the wind and the dust. And we carefully plugged every thru hull with kitchen scrubbies to keep the bugs out. We spent the better part of each day in the San Carlos Marina making the preparations so that once we were out of the water there would be mostly just fitting the cover left to do.
In our favor this year, since we are not trying to sell IRIE, we didn't have to remove all our personal stuff. That had been a BIG job before. I don't even want to think about doing that on this boat!
Anyway, as you can see in the pictures, IRIE had to become a "Highway Boat" to make the 1/2 mile trip to the storage area. They floated us onto a flatbed trailer with padded hydraulic arms that held the boat upright, then a front end loader type tractor pushed us on down the road. We felt like quite the attraction, though in about a month, this scene will be repeated a few times every day.
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| San Carlos Marina Hotel courtyard |
The bus ride was OK. Comfortable seats for the 7 hour ride which included one Federal inspection in Mexico and one hour for US Customs. Compared to the 19 hour ride we did two years ago, well, I bet you can guess. Even the flights went mostly on schedule, though, I dream of never having to spend another minute in an airport.
Well, as you know, our blog here will likely become pretty quiet for the Summer, but, even though there is no schedule, we have a lot planned for the next sailing season: A train ride to 9,000feet to see the Copper Canyon, sailing to Mazatlan and maybe Puerto Vallarta, back across to La Paz for Carnival, then up the Baja again and back across the Sea to San Carlos for Summer storage.
