What a joke

Unfortunately the joke is on us! We had our Windows Vista changed by Telcel to Windows 7. The problem is that it is in Spanish. You would think, no problem, just change it to English. That’s what we thought. It does not work out to be that easy. You see, we have to change everything and that includes the keyboard. Yep, when you hold down the shift key and hit the question mark key, you get this _. Hmmm, that does not look like a question mark to me. I have not figured out how to fix this particular problem yet. The computer is now full of little surprises like this. For instance, when I started this post I discovered the spelling corrections were in Spanish. I am not a computer whiz, so this might take some time. Please be patient while I try to figure it all out.

Now, I will try to catch everyone up to date. We are presently hauled out at the Abaroa boat yard in La Paz. We had intentions of painting the bottom with the hard bottom paint we purchased in the USA. This, as most plans, did not materialize. They will not allow dry sanding in the yard. We tried to wet sand the old ablative paint off for five days and got less than a quarter of it done. This is no good, as it would take around a month to paint the bottom and would be cost prohibitive. We decided to buy a cheap [2000 pesos[ gallon of ablative paint to put over the area we sanded and lightly sand the remaining area to bring the minerals back out. This will allow us to spend the summer enjoying the Sea of Cortez, instead of working our butts off. That is not why we came here. We will then haul out in Guaymas where it is a third the price and we are allowed to dry sand the paint off. That will only take about three days to accomplish. They charge $ 150 a week space rent there and only $ 100 a month in Guaymas. Why didn’t we just haul out there in the first place? Because our depth finder went bonkers and we needed to install the new one we purchased back in Newport OR. You can’t anchor here without one. It’s just too dangerous. We also will try to get our refrigeration leak, auto pilot and our water maker repaired, while we are in the yard. We paid for two weeks here, so will get done what we can. As usual the people who owe us money are not making their promised payments to us, so money is a big issue. Everything, with the exception of medical is very expensive here. Guess I’ll have to make some calls again to get some cash flow. We applied for our FM3s, which will allow us to stay in Mexico and not have to leave every six months to reapply for visas. They cost $300.00, but that is much cheaper than returning to the states every six months. When we leave the yard, we will anchor out as it is free. At that point the expenses will drop considerably. The food here is cheap in restaurants compared to the states, and very good.