Greetings fellow waterbabies.....
Wish this was news of a positive nature, but as you'll see, it's clearly not the case and the sailing/boating community needs to be aware of what is happening south of the border, and for all to be prepared for the potential consequences when engaging in certain activities in Mexican waters.
There is strong reason to believe that in the past 45 days or so, two sailing vessels have been seized in Mexican waters. It would seem that in both cases, the captain/owner had entered Mexican waters on a tourist visa and was actually working in
Mexico for payment as a
charter captain or some sort of instructor, and without any
legal permission to be doing so.
We're not exactly sure of the locations but the scuttlebutt is that in addition to having the vessel seized (as of this writing we believe is still kept by the arresting agency), one
captain was jailed for more than 10 days, fined over $900 US $ and has been barred from entering
Mexico in the future.
As for the second event, we know the vessel has been seized but what the captain's/skipper's status is we're not sure. Any information you could share regarding this would be most appreciated.
To the fleet, it would appear that there has been a paradigm shift in Mexico's level of tolerance of expats providing services for payment while on a tourist visa. We've known for quite some time that doing so was illegal, but to the best of our knowledge have never seen such enforcement tactics in play. It would seem that the risks have now gone way up.
Fair winds and following seas.