As if trying to weep: El Salvador 2006

As if trying to weep: El Salvador 2006 by Karin Cope and Marike Finlay | Make Your Own Book

To the Marina Seca

25 May 2009 San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico

Quoddy's Run exits the water today to lumber, an ungainly creature on borrowed wheels, up the highway to the Marina Seca or "dry" storage.

Boats always look naked and vulnerable as they leave the water, faintly obscene; we are not supposed to see them like this, their bottoms showing. As soon as they leave the water, they cease to be in their element, their glory.

For boat owners, too, this is a fraught, heart-stripping moment: so many things could go wrong! But the Marina Seca in San Carlos is a brilliantly conceived and impeccably run place and the trailer with movable arms that lifts the boat out of the water and cradles her as she travels the two kilometers up the highway to the dry marina is a marvel of engineering, and always expertly handled. Besides, we tell ourselves and others, to try to calm that anxious flutter in the heart, we've done this before--twice already! But you never do feel utterly, fully prepared.

Nevertheless, the moment of the haul arrives. We are towed from our too-shallow, too-tight dock to the slip at high water. The trailer is there, sunk in the water, waiting for us. Quoddy is pulled forward, gently, over and between the rocker arms, which are then adjusted and readjusted by a little remote control box.




Finally the boat is settled on the trailer to everyone's satisfaction. Slowly, slowly, the driver of the front end loader that will pull the boat out of the water backs up. Everyone watches carefully; last minute adjustments are made, and the boat inches out of the water--up one foot, another one--the eye that Dee painted on her bow to ward off evil in full view, then the keel.

There's a last minute check of all pads and arms and angles, then, thumbs up! the boat can go!





She's off, up the ramp, through the driveway, past Barracuda Bob's cafe and the laundromat and the chandlery to the highway, where--backwards!--she'll sail past the Oxxo store, a Pemex station and blooming cacti.


One turn, a long driveway, past a workshop where an abandoned panga rots, and through the gates. This is the Marina Seca, an enormous desert storage yard for thousands of boats.

Quoddy's Run is parked between two sets of "hurricane poles"--steel poles set in concrete, secured with jackstands, and sprayed down--that's it for the barnacles and seaweed collecting on her undersides. They're gone!

Marike pulls her enormous covers over the boat; we stuff all of the through-hulls with scotchpads, put foil backed insulation material over the windows, close and batten down the hatches and port-lights, place open buckets of water in the cabin--an effort to keep the teak from cracking in 140 degree F summer desert heat, remove the rest of our bags and lock up the boat.

Back down the steep ladder to the ground, and that's it for another year.




One backward look--Quoddy we'll miss you!--she really is like a live creature; we feel we owe our lives to her...

Wait, we can't leave yet. One more backward look--how will we ever find her again?


Now we're ready--off to an air-conditioned condo with hot running water, a pool, a bed that neither moves nor slopes at peculiar angles, wireless internet access, cable television in three languages....too bad we're staying just one night...




Images:
Panga at shop near Marina Seca
Hauling Quoddy's Run--from water to highway
Quoddy's Run in the Marina Seca
Marina Seca view from the deck--boats as far as the eye can see
View from Condominiums Dorado, San Carlos
Cool Mexican condo humour--polar bear plates

Adventures at Dock

24 May 2009

San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico

Back on land—or almost on land; some of the time on land, sometimes unwillingly, unwittingly.

We spend our valuable time at dock tearing down the boat—cleaning, patching, folding, flaking, polishing: it is a huge labour to put a boat to bed for some months. When I tell my mother what we’re doing, she writes, “Sounds like you two are doing a massive "house cleaning"--which we can never

get free from, no matter where we are located.”

So true, alas. Bougainvillea and ocotillo in bloom all around; swallows nesting in the cliffs, warblers hiding in the sails, pelicans staking claim to sections of the docks and fishing, lazily, in the shallows—it is utterly beautiful here. The landscape is magnificent. And we are so busy we hardly see it.

We make lists: of jobs still to be done; of things to be left on the boat; of things to be brought home; of medical items that must be replenished or brought when we return; of all sorts of products we’ll need next year, from fuel filters and head repair kits to a large spool of braided string; we make a wish list for the rigging, then handling devices; spell out possible alternate deck arrangements; note which canvases will have to be replaced; try to sort out where we can stay overnight in Tucson when we arrive on the bus from Guaymas, and so on.

The days are long and hot. We get up with the sun—by 6 am—and work until it goes down after 8 pm; then we light mosquito coils, set up the bug screens and mosquito netting and eat supper. Every part of us aches—feet, hands, legs, fingers, arms; each day is an unending exercise routine: lifting, pulling, shoving packaging, twisting, stowing. If I had the energy, which I don’t, because I’m sapped by heat and chores, I could make up a little dance for us: the putting the boat away dance. It would have to be a marathon, punctuated by liters of lukewarm Gatorade—an essential supplement in these latitudes.

When we can finally lie down, sleep comes quickly.

Today we are particularly tired because we awoke at 4am to the stench of diesel. Our berth and boat were tilted towards the dock at an angle of 15 degrees or so. We were on the hard, and not in a comfortable way!

We’d gotten the last available slip, known to be a bit too shallow for a boat like Quoddy’s Run that draws (requires) 6.5-6.75 feet of water. We took the slip anyway, thinking, well, we have a big full keel; it won’t hurt the boat to stand on the keel once or twice a day at low water. But it is disconcerting to be heeled over on the land!

Line drawing of Kelly-Peterson 44, showing keel and rudder below the waterline

The angle was sharp enough that it was impossible to find a comfortable position in which to sleep. Too, the vents to the port side fuel tank were, since the tank was full, weeping. When we got up at first light a litre of combustible, as diesel is called here, pooled on the deck, up against the bulwarks. Mmm, delicious, the smell of diesel before breakfast!

Images:

Quoddy’s Run at dock in Marina San Carlos

Line drawing of Kelly-Peterson 44, showing keel, from the Peterson Cutter website:

http://www.kp44.org/Plans_and_drawings.php

Desert plants in bloom around the docks and along the highway