Captain Frank is again a happy sailkor - UPDATE FOR APRIL 18, 2008

On Monday I was not going to be denied. I was going to see to it that I get my window from customs. I started the day by going down to DHL (package delivery service) and telling them I don't speak Mexican and I want to get my window. PLEASE HELP. Since they were only the people that deliver the packages they had nothing to do with getting stuff through customs. They did get me in touch with someone at the customs office who spoke English. She said that I needed to go to the bank and pay the import
fee and then send a copy of the recite to her by 2:30pm and she would release the package back to DHL. Seems simple enough but just that little bit took 2 hours. It was now 11:00 and I was worried that 31/2 hours was not enough time and I would have to start all over again on Tuesday. I then took a cab to the bank she told me to go to and my heart sank when I saw the line to get in the bank was out the door. I decided to just get in the bank and start crying and maybe someone would take pity on
me. Not exactly. I did go in and find the first person at a desk and told him my story. He took pity on me and started trying to help. Two more hours and we were almost there. He took my money gave me a voucher and then said I would have to go down the street and find a fax machine to send to customs because their machine was broke. Bottom line is I Got it done with hardly a minute to spare. Ok that was step one window could now be delivered. Step 2 I needed to get the people at DHL to deliver
the package as soon as possible and they did it was in my hands Tuesday afternoon. Step 3 get the old window out and the new one in. For that the dock master called someone. Larry, Curly,and Moe showed up ready to smash and thrash. They would take no prisoners. Glass went everywhere. I sent Barbara up to the hotel to do email so she couldn't see the mess. Long story short we got the new glass in. When they were done the work area around the window looked like someone had been murdered. There
was blood and black sealer and glass everywhere. These guys didn't believe in gloves. They grabbed glass with their bare hands and tore it away from the window. When we got done I told them I would clean up just tell me what I owe. One of them had a phone and made a call then all 3 just left. The next day I found out what I owed and left it with the dock master.

Thursday we topped off the fuel tank and by 1 pm we were on our way. What an ordeal. This was all a blessing in disguise because it gave us a chance to slow down and enjoy our new life style. As I stated earlier it wasn't a bad place to be stranded.

We are now about 170 miles off the west coast of Mexico heading sort of SW. I say sort of because at this stage of the game we just need to generally follow the wind. We have a long way to go. The weather is perfect but we could use a little more wind. There is no other boat traffic in this area which makes it nice to not have to watching out for the big ships all the time. We have seen no other vessels since last night at 11.

That is pretty much from here. Just a reminder I will update our position on the web site about every 6 hours and if you want to send us an email do so at kd0cff@winlink.org.