sailing casita

We are finally really doing it! Only about 7 or 8 years late but better late than never, as the saying goes. We have a target departure date of October 5th (2024). We will spend a month cruising the California coast before heading down the Baja Peninsula and into the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). We are debating just spending the winter in Mexico and leaving for the South Pacific March 2025, or taking our time and not departing until March 2026. Currently we are leaning toward staying longer in Mexico.

We are working our way down a “to do” list before casting off, not everything on the list needs to get done before we leave but we hope to whittle it down quite a bit in the next 6 months.

Today was exciting because we were able to mark off “Apply for TIP”. TIP stands for “Temporary Import Permit” and is required for us to take our boat to Mexico. It really feels like a milestone to have submitted our application. Fingers crossed that it gets approved. The only reason it would be denied is if a previous owner of Casita had a TIP and never cancelled it. This would be a huge obstacle and could potentially require a trip to Mexico City to resolve, with no guarantee of success. We know that a previous owner took Casita to Mexico so an uncancelled TIP is a possibility, but there is a site where you can enter your HIN to check and ours seems clean.

Probably the biggest item left on our list is replacing the chainplates. These are what connects the wires that hold up the mast to the hull of the boat. Kinda important. In Casita’s case we can’t just unbolt them and install new, the existing ones are actually integral to the hull of the boat. This makes for a very strong attachment, but they are impossible to remove for inspection and/or replacement without literally cutting our boat up. Our solution is to leave them in place and install new ones on the outside of the hull. A few other owners of Hans Christian 33s have already successfully done this, it’s nice not to be the trailblazer for this!

Devon has been putting a lot of work into the chainplates, getting them cut, bent, and polished is no minor task (they are 3/8″ thick stainless steel). He is almost done with this stage, but the bolt holes still need to be drilled. Then we start drilling holes in the side of the boat!