Back in Uruguay

We left our winter home of Club San Fernando on the afternoon of September 14th, fueled up and anchored for the night in the Delta. We left early the next morning to continue on to Colonia, Uruguay across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires. We had spend 2 days in Colonia the end of May on a quick trip to renew our Argentine visas and felt a stopover in Colonia would be a nice way to break up the trip to Piriapolis, Uruguay. Arriving on a Friday we found only a few boats tied up on the marina wall. Saturday afternoon we went into town for lunch and when we returned we found that a regatta from Buenos Aires was arriving and the wall was suddenly fender-to-fender boats. Boats were squeezed in until there was absolutely no more room. Then some boats started tying up two deep. We had two boats come in the dark and tied up behind us, resting on our mooring lines. We had to point out to them that there were six boats all tied to a buoy that would normally have only two boats and that one of those boats was Tamara weighing in at 18 tons! After a couple of hours and untangling of lines they anchored in the harbour. By mid-day Sunday the regatta boats had all left and we had the wall, once again, all to ourselves.

Monday afternoon after getting a good weather report we continued onto Piriapolis, arriving the next morning. The haul out yard was full of boats, many of them foreign that had been left for the winter, their crews heading to their respective homes for a few months. With the arrival of Spring, crews are returning to prepare their boats for the next leg of their journey. When we arrived there were two French boats, an Australian, a Swiss, a Swede, a Dutch and another American boat, the first we’ve seen since the Canary Is. And so we've begun to become acquainted with boats intending to head South, same as us. Tamara has been hauled out and we have been busy cleaning and painting the bottom, polishing and waxing the topsides and will splash her back in the water next week. We have lots of time and feel no pressure to hurry on our way.

We've been enjoying Piriapolis and the much more relaxed and easy going Uruguayans. The tourist season hasn't began yet and the town has a sleepy atmosphere. We've met a few Americans who have made the smart decision to retired here; a comfortable standard of living, an inexpensive national health care plan (the President is a cancer specialist physician, adopting the first national smoking ban in public places in the Americas), good weather and easy going life style. It's very tempting!

Next stop - Mar del Plata, Argentina.