Leaving Guaymas

Along the arteries of Guaymas flows a stream of white busses. The winding and changing of their gears is a sound that floats out over the water to our anchored sailboat. Staccato punctuation of barking dogs comes in stereo from many points around the bay.

The evening’s light breeze corrugates reflected lines of light into a trail of dashes. They reach for us from all sides. A full moon rises yellow over the late workers at the shipyard whose amber welding sparks fly from the silhouettes of fishing boats. Nearby the masts of sailboats on the hard at Marina Seca pierce the sky. Ours was among that forest for almost 3 years.

We enjoy dinner in the cockpit and talk under the stars. How many last trips to town have we made this week? Last hamburgers at Popeye’s? How many flights have I made from Loreto in the last 3 years? Guaymas feels like another home. The 5-peso bus ride is no longer a novelty. I almost know my way around the crooked streets of town.

We recall friends we’ve made with the long-timers in the boat yard and Mac the beer brewer. Earlier in the evening I went for a surf ski paddle and passed in front of Mac’s place where he and Richard were out enjoying the fruits of Mac’s labor. I paddled close to say goodbye let them know Henrick was taking his leave of marina friends with a final happy hour. Richard set off to join in.

During the night the wind comes up and a bumper we had hanging over the side to keep the dinghy from banging the boat is missing. I paddle downwind at first light and recover it from the beach, tying it to the back deck of the ski and trying to keep it balanced.

Misty floats proud on the slimy Guaymas waters as I return. Henrick has overhauled just about everything on her since coming here. Bowsprit, railing, aft platform, kayak racks, hull paint, and deck paint. That’s just what you can see from the outside. There are the invisible projects. Rust eradication and painting every metal surface, from the bilge (my introduction to boat work), to the ceiling of the cabin, to the insides of the cockpit lockers. In the cabin, he remodeled the chart table with built-in cooler, and the seating/table/bed. He added storage in the forepeak, the stern, and several places in between.

I return the bumper and paddle on for a final loop of the bay and its cactus-studded islands. The sun rises and ignites surrounding red peaks with its flame. Brown pelicans turn their bills down to look as they glide over my head. Three snowy egrets flap past and a pair of chatty oystercatchers bickers over something on their way to an island.

Misty shines in the morning light with her new wine-red paint. She’s a practical boat, full keel, double-ended, seaworthy. Her railings are 1 1/4” diameter galvanized steel. Something solid to hold onto. She looks less like a luxury yacht than a worthy travel companion with whom you can weather the storms. She doesn’t quite look Mad Max yet, but come by on laundry day after a few thousand more nautical miles, and she might.

A few more details: sails on, loose stuff stowed, waypoints programmed, and we’re on our way out of Guaymas, on to the rest of the world and whatever adventures lie ahead.

Seven Life Lessons from the Boatyard

Moving towards deliberate consciousness.

Kayaking. From basic principles of physics, to finer points of paddling technique, to how we interact, kayaking is just a tool for life to teach us what’s true. This has been my life philosophy for many years. Now it’s starting to expand to bigger boats.

Today I painted the wine-red hull and put another coat of epoxy paint in the forward part of the bilge. Everything wants to tear apart a boat: salt water, sun, heat, movement. Paint is one of those things that holds it together, like social etiquette.

On a sailboat, even in the boatyard, it pays to make every move a conscious one. Hit your head in a confined space enough and you’ll learn. Try to avoid the freshly painted bits while living among them. Don’t drop the tools overboard. In life, we don’t get to do it over again, either. Here are some life lessons from the last month in the boatyard:

• Projects go easier by moving slowly enough to think.
• Prepare well.
• Change the perspective when necessary, rather than struggling from the position you’re in just because you’re there.
• Give a project or a person the time they need, even if it’s longer than expected.
• Adjust expectations frequently. They are just illusions anyway.
• Endeavor to see a project through to its finish before beginning another, but also be willing to set it aside if something more important comes up. It’s delightfully liberating to take on no more than one thing in a given moment.
• Painting your partner’s sailboat is just another way of saying “I love you.”

Marina Seca

A boatyard is a unique community. Think of a boat as a home. Some are fixer-uppers, some are in good shape requiring only regular maintenance, and some are plush vacation homes, cared for by hirelings. Some are lifetime labors of love. Some are lived in while a renovation is done. Some are occasionally visited. The difference between houses and boats, is that a house is usually attached to a piece of ground, and that the people inspired to inhabit those homes are spread into their corners of the countryside. Boats, on the other hand, often congregate where the services are available when maintenance or renovation is required or a return from the vacation is due.

Marina Seca is a dirt lot in Sonora, Mexico next to the sea. A concrete wall and a chain link fence surround it. Intermittent electricity and water, even more intermittent internet, and a boat lift, are the amenities. Sunshine is more reliable than water or electricity, and almost every day is a painting day. The town of Guaymas is nearby with materials, San Carlos isn’t far with some marine goods, and the US is a day’s drive away for specialty items. Marina Seca attracts the do-it-yourselfers of the boat world.

Some breeze through in a day or two, haul up their boats, wash off the salt, scrape the barnacles, cover the windows, lock it up, and are gone to their other lives. For some it’s minor repairs and paint. Some cruisers stay for months and repair holes in a hull or change a mast or redesign a structure. Others have eddied out of the flow altogether and settled into their live-aboard projects, climbing ladders into their dry boats. Wood boats with rot, steel boats with rust, cement boats dissolving to bits. None will ever see even pennies per hour for the work they do. But daily they answer the call of some internal time clock.

It’s a forest of boats, with their accompanying stanchion-branches supporting them. Climbing the ladder to board adds to the feeling of living in a treehouse in a strange landscape.

At Marina Seca (dry marina) the boats may be dry, but their people certainly aren’t. In the afternoon shade of a hull stripped bare of paint, happy hour begins. The hardworking forest elves drink themselves giddy before retreating up their steps each to their own deck with a view over the wall, then down into the bellies of the boats to sleep.

After some weeks, this scene feels familiar. Just another community. Round-bellied tree houses feel like the norm. The glacial progress of projects becomes visible. Everyone has a story. They lack only to be written down, but somehow it’s appropriate that the stories, like the wind that bore them, blow away with the ending of each day.

These are the good old days. Living simple with a purpose. Talking of love, lifetimes, and dreams. Sailing Vessel Misty is our capsule to see the world, even if only in our imaginations for the moment. Meanwhile she gives our days structure as we ready her for long voyages, wherever they may be.