News, News and More News

Where to start? I guess I should begin where I left off. We hauled Bettie out and painted the bottom. Vlad and Jaime sanded off all the old bottom paint and ground down and fared the keel. Then, they painted on two coats of epoxy primer and three coats of bottom paint mixed with cooperous oxide and New Mexican hot chili powder (don’t ask!). It took seven days of pretty grueling, in-the-hot-sun work, but they got it done and done well. 

Look at that awesome, shiny paint job!

Of course, as I complained before, it cost mucho dinero, because as we now know the La Cruz Shipyard has the most expensive haul out fee in North America at $19.80 a foot for the haul out and $1.10 for lay days. At least, I couldn't find a pricier work yard after a few days of internet scouring. They raised their already vastly inflated prices 10% from 2013. Go figure. 

Anyway, for eight days on the hard, we paid $1,100, which was a slight discount due to my complaining. I would highly recommend going somewhere (pretty much anywhere!) else if you want a fair price and decent service. (The service wasn’t terrible, but it was pretty crap when you consider that we were paying such an astronomical price. Everyone told me to get used to it because "it’s Mexico," but my thought is that if they want to charge more than the United States they had best have better, faster service. Or you might as well go to San Diego. Which I highly suggest anyway.) Ok, I’m done complaining about this, and I hope I’ve warned all future, budget, DIYers to steer clear of the Banderas Bay area if you need a shipyard. I repeat DO NOT go to La Cruz or Puerto Vallarta for a haul out if you at all value your money. 

So, what else has happened in the past month and a half? Well, we have been hashing over our future plans for a while now and decided that it was time. Time to head back to land. Back to jobs. We are now in New Mexico, where Vlad is working and I am on Jaroslav duty, and we are contemplating our next move.

This is what we look like when we contemplate.

And so we are putting Bettie up for sale. When we started this adventure back in 2012, we knew we had enough savings for a couple of years of sailing. Then, we had a kiddo, and then we got stuck in working in La Cruz, and then we decided that maybe it was finally time for something different. I have some final thoughts on our trip that I'll go into detail on in subsequent posts, a bit of nostalgia mixed with excitement for whatever we decide to do next. And of course, I'll give details on Bettie in case anyone wants to buy the best boat ever.