Why Sell?

The disarray in my hotel room in La Paz is a sure sign of how organized and easy it is to sell a sailboat in Mexico. I honestly can’t really figure out what exactly is going on here (in regards to my room or the boat). I know there is now a bunch of money in an account that belongs to one of the crewmembers of the Misty Moonlight. She does not even know its there but these 2 guys who halfway own Misty sure do. Tonight I finally just had to let it go for a while and eat lots of bakery items in bed while watching a movie. As we have often said, it is all happening now and part of that soon to be now is the Captain’s arrival to Cabo tomorrow. I’ll be there to retrieve her and am elated to have a helping hand in enduring the madness of it all. My advice is it’s a great idea to buy a sailboat but you should never sell it. It’s just not worth the effort.

So lets back up. Misty Moonlight got put up on the Craigslist market over a month ago. There was lots of interest but no one really wants a boat with a bum strut with a handmade brace. The decision was to replace it. Sharkfoot and I headed to Baja with different agendas. She was headed to be a kayak guide in the Sea of Cortez (RAD!!) and I was headed to be a land sailor in the Bercovich boatyard (SAD!!) close to La Paz. We ate 18 tacos together, passed 8 checkpoints and said out goodbyes.

I arrived to La Paz and two days was enough time for removing the old strut, arranging for the new strut to be made, showing some potential buyers the boat, hanging flyers, and developing an amazing gastrointestinal problem that is still being fought.

You work fast and hard when you are staying in a boatyard and so clearly see what might happen if you stay just a little too long. You might become the one-eyed sail maker who has had his boat on land for years with hopes of sailing away or the boatless guy who sleeps on a cot under a boat and does bottom painting without any protection at all.

More than anything, being around Misty without the crew was too much. It made my heart ache and if we wanted to sell the boat, I had to bury my longing to go sailing and pretend I didn’t love her so much.

I headed out for some beach time and Thanksgiving with a motorcycle gang. We enjoyed a roasted chicken from Wal-Mart, chorizo pasta and an assortment of pastries. Snorkeling with the Frenchman at the reef of Cabo Pulmo made the previous few days all worth it. By the time I got to Cabo (don’t ask), the guys who saw the boat had emailed, called and texted wanting to make an offer. I was beside myself and headed back to La Paz after a final outing into the nightlife of Cabo with the motorcycle gang.

We negotiated, settled on a price, and over the last few days the finer details of selling a boat in Mexico have surfaced. Apparently, you gotta get the dinero, go to Cabo for notarizing, get the strut put back on and aligned, get pissed at the buyers, deal with the owner of a boatyard who you owe a lot of money and…..Are you ready for the icing on the cake? At the last minute the buyers say they want to hear the engine cranked. Good idea on their part and for us, it means we will be working on the boat after all to get her up and running. All I can do is be thankful that I get to spend a few more days with the Captain on Misty. We’ll be back where we belong and wishing Sharkie was with us and Misty Moonlight was back at sea lulling us to sleep. If they don’t like the way she sounds, I know where I’ll tell them to go and I know where I’m going, I’m going sailing. Selling a boat is too much work.