We begin the day by clearing out of Mexico.\u00a0 We start at 9am \u2013 ish (remember this is Mexico.)\u00a0 Oh, the paperwork\u2026\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first thing you have to do when arriving in a new country is \u201cclear in\u201d and the last thing you have to do is \u201cclear out.\u201d It\u2019s not consistent from country to country, it\u2019s not even consistent between port to port within a single country.\u00a0 You just have to go with the flow.\u00a0 Fortunately, we are staying at a marina that is helping us through the process and even driving us to the various points around the city we need to visit.<\/p>\n
We start with paperwork at the marine office.\u00a0 Then we, along with crew from 3 other boats, climb into the marina truck (some of us in the cab, others in the open bed in the back) and drive to the port authority to pay a fee and do paperwork.\u00a0 Then we go to the airport to clear out with immigration.\u00a0 We pay another fee and get our passports stamped.\u00a0 Then, off to the port captain to get our \u201czarpe\u201d (Mexican exit visa).\u00a0 You guessed it \u2013 another fee.\u00a0 And a long wait this time.\u00a0 Even our marina guide is puzzled by how long it takes to print out the zarpes.\u00a0Finally at about 1pm we are presented with a single piece of paper that looks nice enough to frame.\u00a0 Our first zarpe. Back to the marine for final paperwork.\u00a0 But we\u2019re still not done.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s time for a boat inspection by the Mexican navy and the port captain (and yes, more paperwork).\u00a0 We serve them sodas as they sit in the cockpit.\u00a0 Dante takes pictures and they are charmed.\u00a0 They don\u2019t inspect the boat with drug dogs as we had expected. Finally, we are free to go!\u00a0 It\u2019s 3pm.<\/p>\n
We shove off at 4pm ready (or not) for the passage to Panama.\u00a0 We begin with enough wind to sail and Darold is ecstatic.\u00a0 Though we carry 65 gallons of fuel in the tank and another 65 gallons in jerry cans on deck we don\u2019t have enough fuel to motor the whole way.\u00a0 We need wind as we are in the doldrums where winds are often light and unpredictable. Unfortunately the sail is short-lived.\u00a0 After a couple of hours the wind dies and we have to fire up the \u201ciron jib\u201d (the 56 horses of the Yanmar diesel) and we motor through the night in light winds, taking turns on watch.\u00a0 The first of at least 10 nights of on-and-off sleep. Whoopee!.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We begin the day by clearing out of Mexico.\u00a0 We start at 9am \u2013 ish (remember this is Mexico.)\u00a0 Oh, the paperwork\u2026\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first thing you have to do when arriving in a new country is \u201cclear in\u201d and the last thing you have to do is \u201cclear out.\u201d It\u2019s not consistent from country to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sailing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}