Dockwise

The Saturday before Art took off for San Francisco, we helped our neighbors on Lily, a Beneteau 48, load their boat onto Dockwise. Dockwise is a service that ships boats all over the world on semi submersible vessels. It's like a cross between a ship and a dry dock. They pull into a port (in our case, Pinchilinque) and fill their ballast tanks so that their deck is low enough for the deepest draft boat they plan to load.

The dockwise ship arrived in La Paz with several boats already aboard from previous stops:



Lily went in to port of the boat that is the furthest right in this photo:



The boats all drive on, their crews leave, welders construct stands under the boats, and they pump the water out, raise the boat to its normal waterline and take off. It's pretty cool, and in our neighbors' case, saved them a minimum of a couple of months of upwind sailing to get back to the Pacific Northwest. This way they get to spend the summer up there, rather than getting there. They'll unload in Nanaimo.

This boat loaded behind us:


It was a really interesting way to spend the morning. They took us all off the boat via a launch to Costa Baja, and we caught a cab from there back to our marina.