Monday, April 5, 1993 - Acapulco

A tiny little sailboat, "Glory", tied up next to us this morning, single-handed by a little old man who looked 75 years old but turned out to be 67. He looks like a toothpick; couldn't weigh more than 100 pounds soaking wet. It's a wonder he can handle his boat, even though it's only 23 feet long. He has good equipment, though. His autopilot works off his GPS. He has radar and all the rest. His name is Henry, and he's from Poole, England, which is where the Jofian was built! He told us he's a retired dairy farmer (we found out later he's an English lord). He's been sailing off and on for 40 years. He's sailed 62,000 miles, has circumnavigated the globe, and is an honorary member of the Slocum Society. A very nice, humble, soft-spoken man.
Listened to the local net and obtained a lot of valuable informa-
tion. Several people are going through the check-in procedure as a group. We'll join them, and so will Henry. The Migracion office has moved, but the leader of the group, Monika, has a map and knows where it is, so it's lucky we're going with her.
At nine, we went up to the office and paid our fees for three days. At ten, Monika, Jerry, Henry, Roy, and I set off on our check in adventure. Rode a speeding bus to the Migracion office, which we found without too much difficulty. After getting our papers stamped, we rode another bus back to the Port Captain's office. Since our papers said "Zihuatanejo", I had to write a statement in Spanish explaining why we hadn't stopped there. Henry needed a statement in Spanish explaining why he'd stopped in Acapulco when his papers said "San Diego", so I wrote that, too. Both statements were undoubtedly loaded with errors, but they were accepted.
When we were through at the Port Captain's office, we went across the street and paid our port fees. Then the group broke up. We and Henry walked to town and looked for a cambio. Found one, but it was temporarily out of money. Ran off six copies of our check-out paper. Ate a good lunch at Sanborn's. Returned to the cambio, whose money supply had been replenished, and got some pesos.
Went back to the boat and got our shopping bags. We had agreed with Henry to buy groceries together and share the cost of a cab to take them back to the boat. Got on the wrong bus and found ourselves going very slowly through the back streets, so when we saw a super market, we got off. Bought 800 pounds of groceries (only slight exaggeration). How Roy ever carried them to the cab, I'll never know. The cab fare was only 7 pesos, so we saved money as well as time. Invited Henry to have supper with us.
Sometime during the day, we arranged to buy diesel at the yacht club fuel dock Wednesday morning.