Hauled out in Piriapolis, Uruguay
Wednesday 01.30.2008

The Schooner Maggie B is hauled out in Piriapolis, Uruguay, still approximately at 34° 53S, 55° 17W. Yesterday we were plucked from the water by a huge travel lift and placed delicately in the yard. The travel lift is capable of lifting 80 tons and had an easy time with us.

Today we worked like dogs, sanding the whole hull in the morning, getting completely covered with the red dust of the old paint. In the afternoon we painted, getting a coat on the hull (and us) by 1700. She looks lovely! Tomorrow we will put a second coat on, and cover the spots where the log supports prevented us sanding and painting the first pass. Hannah especially specialized in getting about as much paint on herself as on the boat.

Curtis did a quick job of replacing the through-hull fitting, after making a call to Covey Island and talking to the very person who installed it in 2006 - great support from Nova Scotia!

It seems one always has some challenge when one hauls out. Our challenge seems to be bureaucratic. EuroMarine Trading of Newport is the US distributor for Lopolights, our LED navigation lights. We love them, they are very bright, look lovely and use almost no power. Unfortunately we break them a lot. I bought a pile of our broken ones home over Christmas, sent them to EuroMarine so the they could evaluate the weakness we discovered, and they sent out free replacements by FedEx. Free until the hit Uruguay, that is. The stated value on the package is just US$100 (though certainly worth more). Anything of more than US$50 is charged 40% duty. On the value of the package, plus duty on the shipping! Plus, plus, plus. I appointed Thomas our Commercial Attache. He made a close friend of the woman who is the local Customs agent. He had me call the US Embassy in Montevideo’s Commercial Attache. We sent letters with tons of stamps on them swearing we were a foreign boat in transit and would install the lights and leave Uruguay. We had friends of Thomas’s from another Consulate go by. It only got worse. He spent more time on the phone than scraping and painting. Finally we hired an “Agent” who works with FedEx and supposedly $200 will cover all our costs, fees, expenses and tariffs. We’ll see.

Locals say that the problem here is that in most places when you put “Temporary Importation, Boat in Transit” on the package, it helps. Apparently here the math is: boat=money. Perhaps that is why a travel lift that only costs US$25 to get hauled isn’t mobbed by boats from hundreds of miles around. In fact, perhaps that is the bait to get into the tariff mess? I hope we don’t have more surprises.

This time of year the South Atlantic High sits out at about 30-35 degrees South. We went south of it to get from Salvador, Brazil to Cape Town in 2006. Having it there, however, means that the wind along the coast of Uruguay and southern Brazil is from the Northeast, or right on your nose. But if you wait for a nice juicy low to come by to the south, the wind starts from the Northwest and then shifts to the Southeast afterwards, both of which are just right for us. We plan to finish up here in a few days and then move along 20 miles to Punte del Este, the ultra chic resort, to wait for our breeze. Right now it looks as if the next southerly is due February 3rd, which might be to soon for us to make the 600-700 NM run to Florianopolis, Brazil. We’ll see. It will be nice to have a big sail after way too much motoring recently.

All is well.