Oh lord, stuck in Pedro again

Many of the relatively few people who read this already know, but for the rest of you it’s time for a story of diplomacy, deceit, and decisions. Also forgive any factual errors here – I’m definitely not a Mexican maritime or customs expert and we’re letting the experts handle the details.

Mexico was our planned destination for the foreseeable future. When one sails to Mexico, one clears customs for their crew and also for the boat. Mexico has a (very generous) program under which you can temporarily import your boat for a fee of ~$50 and leave it in Mexico for up to 10 years(!) before they want you to pay the normal import tariff. You also agree not to sell your boat while in Mexico for the same reason, as this would in theory require import first. This permit (called a temporary import permit or TIP) is renewable, too, you just have to leave the country after 10 years and they they allow you to return for another 10 years with your boat if you want. Really nice, and one of the many reasons people sail to Mexico and stay a while. Along with the wonderful people, cruising grounds, wildlife, food, and so on.

When you leave Mexico with your boat, you are meant to check out of the country and cancel your TIP. For some reason, some people skip this step. Often related to the not-so-legal sale of boat thing above, but sometimes they just forget. Whatever the case, the TIP doesn’t get cancelled sometimes. If you then pull up in Mexico and a different person owns the boat than is named on the TIP, they could easily assume you bought the boat illicitly in Mexico to avoid paying taxes. If the TIP is expired, they may assume you overstayed and the boat is now (over)due for a full import tax or worse, a trip to impound while they sort it out. In any case, you don’t want to arrive with an active or uncancelled TIP on your boat, especially if it’s not in your name.

When we bought Horizon, we stipulated in our offer terms and were assured by the seller that there was no active TIP on the boat. Of course as you can probably guess, when we went to get a TIP to go to Mexico in August, we found out that there was an active TIP from the prior owner. Righto.

Normally you can get these cancelled by proving that you didn’t buy the boat in Mexico, and are not currently in Mexico. Which we did. Without going into too much more detail, we have what appears to be a TIP that cannot be cancelled. There may be a way to cancel it in the future, but as of this moment Horizon cannot go to Mexico. Ever. There’s an article here about others in a similar situation.

So we are kinda stuck right now. Options:

1. Hop around SoCal anchorages/moorings/guest docks while we wait to see if we are able to find a way to get the TIP cancelled.
2. Get a slip while we wait, and simultaneously get the boat, and ourselves as much as we can, ready to sail to Hawaii. Why Hawaii? Because there is a good window to sail to Hawaii after hurricane season ends and before the winter storm season begins in earnest in California. Usually. This is roughly November through December. This map shows the historical hurricane tracks in these months on that route.
3. Wait in San Pedro and do the prep work until the season to sail to the South Pacific opens in Spring. These folks run a cruising rally – think herd migration – doing this route each year calling it the Pacific Puddle Jump.

We decided against option 1: so far we have no evidence that there is any way to get a TIP of this kind cancelled so a more permanent temporary solution seemed prudent. At the moment we’re mostly working with option 2. We got a temporary slip in San Pedro, and then my parents generously offered to fly us to Hawaii where they live, both to visit and also scope out the harbors/anchorages. Thanks mom and dad! Lovely to see you as always and of course enjoy the healing Hawaiian waters.

Anyhow, the bottom line is we’re in a holding pattern – doing boat projects as though we’ll be sailing to Hawaii in a month and a half, while hoping that our TIP agent in Mexico comes through. This has been a lot to hold, along with the impact each of these changes has on our cruising budget, and the projects we had planned to do in Mexico rather than the US for various reasons that now have to be accelerated…

Our friend Peter Benziger who circumnavigated with his wife Margie (read their adventure here!) says that “Cruiser’s plans are written in the sand at low tide.” Well, he’s not wrong. We’re certain we’re in store for an adventure whatever comes next.