The decision to abandon the trip was disappointing and came slowly, but
we had no inkling of how difficult and slow it would be getting Tempus
Fugit out of Mexico. Our first try was to get a crane operator at the
loading dock to lift the boat onto a pallet (which was yet to be built).
After a struggle with the language barrier, we got an operator and his
boss to agree that it could be moved the next Saturday for a Sunday ship
departure.
Then arose the problem of getting a pallet made strong enough to
support the 3,500-pound weight of Tempus Fugit being lifted on and off
the deck of a ship. She sails lightly across the water but is heavy as
heck out of water. Gordon designed and built the pallet himself out of 4
x 4 timbers bolted together. This proved to be satisfactory.
Saturday morning bright and early we were at the seawall of the
shipping dock with a plan that would make it possible for the crane to
lift our boat. We waited two hours and not a soul showed up so we gave
up for the day, anchored, and returned to the hotel. There we discovered
the problem. Mexico was playing Korea in World Cup soccer, and the whole
town was shut down. The Mexican team won this game but later lost in the
finals, and I expected to see the Mexican flag flown at half mast. So we
had one more week with the toilet that didn't flush and getting fat on
Mexican food. The hotel was cheap, and it was the only one close to
where our boat was anchored.
I had read about the danger of theft in a shipwreck situation such as
ours and even the insurance agent in Miami cautioned me, but the people
of this small town, with their laid-back Mayan ancestry, must have been
different. There were many opportunities for someone to rip us off, but
no one did. Our brand new inflatable and five-horsepower Nissan were
left untouched on the beach for two weeks. Maybe we were just lucky.
When you sail to Mexico and sail out again, you pay only a small entry
and exit fee. But when you want to ship the boat back by freighter, your
boat and everything in it are considered the same as exports. The duties
we were required to pay, plus the customs broker fees, were
considerable, but the worst part was the complications created by
bureaucratic red tape. Even Rodolfo, our Figaro, could not help us much.
Eventually we began to realize that even if the crane operator had
shown up, there would have been insurmountable customs complications for
him to put the boat directly onto the shipping dock before being entered
into the customs holding yard. It would have been the same as if you
were trying to smuggle an ama (pontoon) full of drugs out of Mexico into
the U.S. We now had to get the boat on some type of trailer for
transportation to the dock.
Rodolfo knew people who knew people who eventually found a kind local
man who was building his own trimaran. He had built a light steel
trailer to transport his boat for one trip to the water. It didn't fit
our boat, but it was a great find and a generous offer. I think he felt
a kinship with us because he also planned to cruise this coast in his
tri.
F-27 owners regularly launch and pick up their folding ama boats on a
boat ramp and do it with relative ease. Sometimes they are launched and
retrieved from a beach but with much difficulty. We had a boat, a beach,
and now some sort of trailer, but the best place we could find to pull
it out was still terrible.
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| The makeshift trailer holds 'Tempus Fugit' |
Rodolfo, who was friends with everybody including the commanding officer of the local Mexican Army garrison, again came up with a solution. If we did something nice for the soldiers and supplied the diesel for the truck, they would give us manpower help and the use of an ideal towing vehicle.
When the time arrived to pull her out, the offshore wind picked up, and there were small breakers coming directly onto the beach so the extra manpower was needed to steady the boat on a nonconforming trailer. I set an anchor and long line out over the stern and fed it out slowly as the soldiers guided the bow onto the submerged trailer.
My water-soaked mattresses were used as pads to protect the hull from the steel of the makeshift trailer. This worked well. The powerful army truck winched the overloaded tongue up and pulled our boat far up on the beach. Even this process worked well despite one of the four wheels breaking off the trailer.
God bless the Mexican Army! They may not have done well against Pancho Villa and Zapata, but they surely came to my rescue.
Our reservations for space onboard the freighter had been made two weeks before, and all the proper information was given to our "efficient" customs broker. The wooden pallet was completed, and the wheel was welded back on the trailer. We were ready to deliver Tempus Fugit to the customs holding yard Saturday for the Sunday departure that seldom leaves before Monday. Then, more bad news!
Checking in with the local shipping office, we were dismayed to hear the clerk say, "Sorry, your broker was too late with the papers so your boat didn't get entered on the manifest. No manifest...no load on the ship. Sorry." The broker had left town for the weekend and could not be contacted.
Another dead end and extreme frustration. I believe we could have gotten our boat out of Cuba easier than Mexico. Besides the difficulty with a language barrier, I believe that another big problem is that most Americans cannot understand the Mayan people's disregard for time.
Gordon and Shari flew back to the U.S. He would have stayed to the end but had done all that he could, and Bridget had flown back to give some assistance. At least she kept me from blowing my cool after the two frustrating weeks.
I don't want to leave a bad impression about the people of this little tourist town of Puerto Morelos. Though it was extremely difficult to get anything done, nobody tried to take unfair advantage of us in our sometimes helpless situation.
After 18 days we had come to know and gained confidence in a few good people who we thought could eventually get our boat loaded and shipped to Miami. Bridget and I flew back to the states 21 days after the wreck and were thrilled to find toilets that flushed.
Through the efforts of an American freight forwarder and our friend Rodolfo, the boat did get on a ship.
There was more good news to come. I put Tempus Fugit into the hands of The Finish Line of Jensen Beach, FL--a knowledgeable Corsair dealer--and full repairs were made to bring her back to like new. The daggerboard casing was reinforced to twice the strength of any production boat.
There may be even greater news when, after six months' delay, I can get some money out of the insurance agency. But that's another story.