Let's get this started!

This will be a new blog for Crystal and I. I've another one I started 10 years ago about the home we brought out of the ground, off grid and on 40 acres in southern central Colorado. But Contigo needs a blog all to herself. 

Contigo is spanish for "with me". And the log here, and the invitation to our friends and family is to be "with me". 

The story of purchasing Contigo is one all by itself. I'd been looking for a boat for a few months, and found Contigo for sale for San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico. It was listed at a decent price and caught my eye. I started emailing the seller, Chris, back in October or November of 2019. He's a nice fella, lives in Canada, writes a great story and is easy to talk to. So it was a boat owned by a Canadian, the boat lives in Mexico in the Sea of Cortez and was listed with a local Marian and sales outlet there, San Carlos Yacht Sales. Don and Brisa run the yacht sales outlet there in San Carlos, and they're good to work with. 

I kept looking since the boat was a bit more money than we could come up with. Somewhere in the meantime Crystal and I went to Merida' Mexico to look at a different boat. It was a great trip, but the boat wasn't for us. On our list was another cool boat in Honduras, and we were chatting with that owner in a pretty detailed way as well.

Then in February, Chris dropped the price on Contigo. I immediately emailed him and the yacht sales place and tendered a full price offer. Since it was a relaxed kind of place, things got a little complicated and a little stressful. But all 3 parties continued with diligence and sometime in March or April, money exchanged hands. 

Buying a boat in Mexico is an interesting prospect. It's an offshore sale. The boat, owned by my new Canadian friend, was registered in Delaware, USA. So we all employed the services of a marine title company in Seattle. There was lots of back and forth, Crystal and I made a trip down the highway to San Carlos to take a real look at Contigo and loved the boat. I paid a marine surveyor for as much of a survey as we could get since the boats batteries are dead and it's sitting on the hard. Then we had the boat moved to the "work yard" and had the engine tested (it turned out fine). With that info we took the chance and paid for the boat. 

OK, it was a little more trouble than that, but that about covers it.

Then COVID19 got real, the border got closed, everything shut down. 

Ug.

At this point the title company has worked a great deal to get things going. We have the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)  approval and number so we can work forward on other stuff. :D We're still waiting on all the final papers and such. And we have to get down to the boat to get numbers off things to get all the proper paperwork and licenses set up. Of course the border being closed is a bit of a problem. I've no doubt that will settle itself out before too long. 

So now I'm working on navigation classes, we are scheduled for a boat docking class in Rock Hall, Maryland in the late Summer. We're trying to decide on things we have to do to the boat to float it after hurricane season ends in October. Pretty sure it will involve a drive south to San Carlos, moving the boat to the work yard and spending some time working our asses off. Of course, that is just generally how we do things anyway. 

Stay tuned and we shall see where this little blog goes.