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Melissa & Dave - Adventures at Sea

Vivi Leaves Us

This morning Joan's finger was much improved - so she was confident she could make the 5 day trip to Costa Rica.  However, Steve remembered that he needed to get the oil changed.  He does it every 100 engine hours.  But there wasn't a mechanic anywhere around.  This would mean having to re-do all their exit paperwork on Monday when the mechanic could come do it.  Yeah, so you all know what's coming here... Dave grabs his tool kit and heads over.  He explains to Steve that 100 hours can be a bit overzealous - particularly when the oil is clean as a whistle.  However, the engine filters all needed to be changed.

After all the work is done, the marina calls for the exit inspection and the Navy and Port Captain show up to inspect the boat before it leaves Mexico.  Of course, we are watching this process carefully because we will have to go through it in a little over a week.  Once the inspection is complete the boat must depart within 3 hours.  So we go to say our goodbyes.  Its super sad as we met these guys February 4th and have been buddy boating ever since.  Steve tells Dave that he would like to think of him like a brother - and he's never said that to anyone before.  Joan tells Melissa that she has learned so much from her and that we have to plan to get together in October every year from now on as our wedding anniversaries are only a few days apart.  Vivi barks and runs around.  Many hugs and tears later, Saltydog pulls out of the dock.  Its oddly quiet tonight without those guys around.

Meanwhile, Melissa has been working on the Marina website most of the day.  Turns out that they fell prey to an unscrupulous webmaster who went and registered their domain name www.marinachiapas.com for themselves and are now holding it ransom.  This is apparently a rampant problem here in Mexico where business owners don't understand the importance of doing the domain registration themselves to ensure they always have control of their website.  So Melissa does some research to figure out who the domain registrar is and emails to find out the process for wrenching the domain away from them - assuming such a thing is possible in a fraud case such as this.  Fortunately the domain registrar is a US company.

Meanwhile, even if we get control of the web address, they still need the website content redone.  So Melissa puts up both the Spanish and English versions.  They need some additional content - pictures and more details - which the marina manager and Melissa will work together on Monday to assemble.  This will also serve as a training session for the marina manager as Melissa's goal is for them to be self sufficient.  Take a look at www.marina-chiapas.com.

In the evening the marina manager drops us off on his way home at a restaurant in Tapachula.  We've not been impressed by the food here so far - but this place turns out to be great.  When we arrived they brought out a dozen salsas with the chips.  4 of them were hot.  4 were sweet - like jam.  4 were medium heat salsas.  The waiter insisted that we order the "best" thing.  Yeah, ok, coincidentally it was also the most expensive.  But we went for it anyway - and they brought us a huge platter of steaks, potato's, and garlic bread.  Yum!

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