“Bottom Paint” – what you get when the cockpit seats are freshly painted.
Hello Everyone,
We survived another boatyard experience! Although it was touch and go physically (every trip in and out of Balena involved climbing a 12 foot ladder whose rungs were spaced twice as far apart as would be OSHA approved), emotionally (Randy was furious when he discovered what a poor paint job the Anacapa Boatyard in Oxnard did two years ago) and matrimonially (during the last day of painting our marital status was often brought into question.) Most boatyards are dirty, toxic, unhealthy places. The new Fonatur Boatyard in Guaymas however, is clean and staffed with friendly people who went out of their way to help us. Thank goodness, because we came down with a wicked flu that kept us there two weeks longer than expected. I wish I’d gotten a picture of Randy splattered head to toe with red bottom paint. Trust me, he was a sight to behold. He celebrated the end of the painting project by throwing away all his splattered clothes, including his duck-taped shoes. My boatyard garb tended toward the alien look, as the enclosed picture shows. There’s also a picture of our pretty baby in slings on her way to “splash” after two months “on the hard.”
Guaymas is an old commercial port of about 80,000 people. Pancho Villa lived here and pirates used to hide out behind the islands tucked in her protected harbor. We got to know Guaymas well, thanks in part to riding the local buses. Drivers write their destinations in shoe polish on the bus windows. There are no schedules, so though we’d hop on a bus headed to a place we wanted to go, we never knew what route the bus would take to get there. One day we took a long, circuitous route through an outlying neighborhood chock full of potholes. We had to be careful to keep our tongues behind our teeth as we jolted along or be in danger of biting them off! All the bus drivers seem to think of themselves as race car drivers who ended up behind the wheel of a bus by some cruel twist of fate. We found it best to focus on one of the Jesus or Mary icons prominently displayed inside the bus rather than watch the road ahead. Randy attempted to provide a distraction by describing the mechanical shortcomings which resulted in squealing noises and weird vibrations beneath our feet. Somehow I didn’t find this helpful. We always left the bus with a sharpened appreciation for life, having narrowly escaped death numerous times during the course of a typical cross-town bus ride. Kidding aside, my favorite memory is of boarding the bus with a Mongoloid girl. She carried a stick in an empty 7up bottle and drummed it on the back of the metal seat in front of her as the bus started up. Her impromptu concert captured the aliveness and pulsing rhythm of Mexican life perfectly. Several of the young people in the bus passed her coins of appreciation.
Randy – My favorite bus ride was when I picked up the spare fuel injectors from the diesel laboratory on the edge of town. First, it was $50 to get them cleaned and calibrated (1/4 the U. S. price). Then when I got on the return bus, work had just ended at a manufacturing plant across the street. Somehow we got about 70 people on a bus that holds 40. There was actually no standing room left.
Yep, to get the real flavor of Mexico, you have to ride the buses. And to appreciate the full flavor of cruising life, you have to taste the grit and grime of sanding your boat in a boatyard.
With love and laughter,
Gina and Randy
