The passage past smoothly and come daylight we could see the finish line, Puerto Penasco. We even managed some motorsailing with the engines pulled way back. An attempt was made at sailing but as per usual this only lasted a short time. All in all, a nice way to close out the season.
Huge tidal swings occur in Penasco so we made sure to follow the guiding markers for entry to the harbor. Next up was finding our slip at Safe Marine. We slowly worked our way in and struggled to locate an open slip. Hmm. Adding to the excitement was the depth getting very shallow at the end of the harbor near Cabrales boatyard. Quickly reversing course and I made the decision to move over to the Fontatur dock since our reserved slip didn’t seem to exist. Once motoring towards Fonatur I called up Sedna on the radio and they explained there were no open slips there. What the fuck is going on! Back and forth we go, I’m sure people watching thought what is up with these bozos.
Next thought was that maybe we can tie on a private slip while we figure out the deal. As we got near the dock I could tell that this end-tie was not big enough for us… Ugh, about this time Jack noticed a guy waving to us from a slip at Safe Marine. Next question was could we weave around multiple boats to squeeze in?
Here goes nothing. Hell too difficult to explain, so I I made the graphic below:
To say it was a tight squeeze (slip is about 24 feet wide and Strikhedonia is 21.5 feet wide, plus we overhung the slip by close to 10 feet) would be an understatement. But with Jack, Shalise, and the guy on the dock (who worked for Safe Marine) we managed to get tied up without scratching any boats, whew!
As a side note, we were supposed to have the end-tie but Safe Marine didn’t expect us until the afternoon and had planned to move the boat tied up there later in the day
I have to stop here and give a massive Thank You to Shalise and Jack. They pitched in and busted ass for three and a half very long hot days. Decommissioning for the summer is not a fun job. Tons of cleaning, washing/removing sails, engine work, the list goes on and on. No need to bore readers with that so let’s talk about fun stuff.
The boat that was on “our” end tie was Malika, our friend Scott’s boat. His parents have a place in Rocky Point and he was staying with them. He showed up the first afternoon with a crew for a sail and overnight anchoring. The following day when they returned and Scott’s mom took us out for a fun lunch near the fish market on the malecon. She even shuttled our jerrycans to the gas station so we could top off our diesel tanks. Such a nice woman and so willing to help, God bless her!
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