Our placing of The Fox back in the water – our reverse haulout, if you will – occurred in December, 2014, in Puerto Chiapas, Mexico. I was gratified to overhear a Mexican national on our incoming flight complain about "being back in the Tapachula sauna." At least I know it wasn't just Menopausal Me who had trouble with the heat and humidity.
Overall, The Fox had weathered the 6 rainy summer months fairly well. Sails, rig, transmission, shaft seal, and electronics were all fine. No leaks. Watermaker was fully functional. There was a small amount of corrosion on some electronics terminals and the expected grime on deck and the batteries were fully discharged, but ultimately we found no serious problems with any gear. This pic shows The Fox before getting a new coat or 2 of hull paint.
We had asked the yard guys to prep and paint the hull because the weather was just too hot and humid for GB to DIY this time. The yard guys did an excellent job and it was well worth their labor at US $600. (The copper-enriched hull paint was the typical going price of about US $200 per gallon.) In that pic over there on the left, you can just barely see marina manager Enrique Laclette, striding away in his white shirt.
I'm including here a couple of pics of The Fox leaving dry storage, in case some curious cruiser
wants to examine the background for a little more detail of Marina Chiapas's boat yard. Check out that group of day-sailors heading for the storage racks, too. Lots of activity hereabouts.
Critter report: we found a small bird's nest under the landscape fabric on top of our cockpit arch. There was an egg inside the nest but it looked like the parents had bailed some time ago, as soon as the egg proved, uhhhh, less than viable. Upon removing the Sunbrella cover to
our binnacle/helm, we also discovered a fist-sized wasp nest glommed onto our cockpit table. Down below, some enterprising young wasp had found her way in through the rain covers, through the louvers on the locked cockpit hatch, and through the air-flow gap in the stern cabin's door, to begin another half-dollar-sized nest on the ceiling in there. We saw no insect corpses anywhere, so I figured the wasps simply abandoned their nest construction once Building Code Enforcement caught up to them.
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