Page 128 •

Latitude 38

• May, 2014

Vancouver may be more beautiful than San Francisco, but you have to Bash 730 more miles to get there. It's even colder, too.

experiences. It would not surprise us if the tourist visa expiration date is the Temporary Import Permit expiration date in Salina Cruz, but that's not the case when you get a TIP in Pichilingue. Mexico needs to get consistent. If a 'picture is worth a thousand words', what's a video worth? No matter how many times mariners are warned about the dangers of not wearing an outboard kill switch cord when operating their outboard-powered inflatables, the message doesn't seem to get through. Perhaps the Tribo Surfo video of an Australia surf rescue team's near-disastrous experience — Google www.facebook.com/photo.ph p?v=67609549907 9673&set=vb.3420 89372480289&typ e=2&theater — will change all that, as it illustrates better than words ever could how dangerous an outboard dinghy on the loose can be. And for how long one can be on the loose. In this case, the dinghy/ outboard combo was lethal for nearly three minutes. Fortunately nobody was killed, but as you can see, that was just a matter of luck. Latitude readers will remember that cruiser John Spicher of the Anacortes-based custom Coast 34 Time Piece lost his foot and part of his leg in late February as the result of being

hit by the outboard prop of a runaway dinghy in La Paz. The dinghy operator had reportedly been thrown from his dinghy and hadn't been wearing a kill switch cord, which allowed the dinghy to keep roaring around. Northern California professional sailor Ashley Perrin tells Latitude that it's more effective to wear the kill switch cord around one's leg than wrist, as it's less likely to slip off. Cruiser Bill Lilly of the Lagoon 470 Moontide recommends that people not overtighten the throttle lock screw, so if they go over without a kill switch, the outboard will only be going at a slow idle. One sailor who knows all about getting hit by a boat prop is Giles Findlayson of the Encinitas-based Newport 41 Petrel. In 2009, the then-59-year-old Findlayson, four years into a sailing/ surfing safari, was run down by a fishing boat near the popular cruiser stop of Langkawi, Malaysia. The singlehander was left in the water for dead by the fishermen who had hit him, his arms attached by little more than skin. Fortunately, the guy in the dinghy with Giles was able to keep him from drowning and get him to a doctor. After a long recuperation and recent surgery, Findlayson is cruising again. "Sailing around Indoneisa was an incredible experience," he wrote, "The people, food, coffee, nature, wind, and so much more. A couple of months of the adventure was way too

BALLITO FAIL

Barbados and get a visa! In the case of a French TP52 that went from the British Virgins to the U.S. Virgins for the Rolex, if the French crew wanted to go on the 52, they all would have to fly to Barbados ­— a very expensive proposition — wait a couple of weeks for visas, then fly back to the boat for the one-mile crossing. But there is an alternative that they used. They could take the ferry, instead of the boat, from the British Virgins to the U.S. Virgins without a visa. Ferry or French boat, what's the dif? It's inconsistencies such as this, plus the fact that U.S. borders are porous, that make cynics such as ourselves wonder if the Border Patrol isn't effectively just a ridiculously expensive government welfare program. Craig Shaw and Jane Roy of the Portland-based oldie-but-goodie Columbia 43 Adios report that they are about to start their fourth Bash back up to Portland "after a wonderful season cruising Mexico as far south as Zihua." That got us to thinking how much farther folks who live north of San Diego have to Bash than those who live in San Diego. According to our Navionics charts, it's about 1,000 miles from Puerto Vallarta, which we'll consider to be our reference point in Mexico, to San Diego. Here are the extra straight-line miles, roughly, for those having to continue farther north: Santa Barbara, 160. San Francisco, 430. Portland, 975. Seattle/Vancouver, 1160. At the end of our interview with Precious Metal's Pamela Bendall, we got in one question to the mysterious Mr. X.: 38: Is there anything that you think a monohull does better than a cat? Mr. X: No. A cat does everything better than a monohull. But that's because I live on my boat and cruise. If I were a racer, I'd get a monohull. But you can't beat a cat for living aboard. Yes, sometimes I get slamming on the bottom of the bridgedeck, and on my cat the sides of the hulls, too. But you get used to it. "The tourist visa expiration date is the norm for the Temporary Import Permit (TIP) expiration date on the new sticker-type TIPs as issued in most places!" John Hards of the formerly Nuevo Vallarta-based Idylle 36 Pelican was quoted as saying in Latitude. "Not true!" writes Dave Wallace of the Sea of Cortez-based Amel 52 Air Ops. "We just got a new TIP in Pichilingue last week, and the expiration date is 2024." One of the biggest stumbling blocks Mexico has toward progress is the fact that the interpretation of laws and policies is often left to local officials, so we suspect that both Hards and Wallace are accurately reporting their

VANCOUVER TOURISM

CHANGES

This still photo from the Ballito Fail video of an outboard-powered dinghy tells only part of the story of the truly frightening video.

short." "We've made it to Costa Rica, where everything is expensive," report Mike and Robin Stout of the Redondo Beach-based Aleutian 51 Mermaid. "But it's not like this everywhere in Central America. For while at Bahia del Sol in El Salvador, a