Ouest took another leap forward with her swimming today—swimming underwater. She’s been putting her head under while swimming for months, but always just for a second. Today she stayed under and stroked, and stroked, and stroked. And every time she came up she was smiling as wide as her mouth would allow. She was very proud of herself. She knew she’d conquered something that had been beating her for a while.

I don’t think I mentioned Lowe’s swimming the other day. He basically began doing the same thing Ouest just did—swimming underwater—though he doesn’t seem to realize, or care, that he can’t make it back up on his own. If I’m within about twenty feet of him he’ll look at me, smile, and dive in. He then kicks and paddles like a madman, but can’t get any more than just his eyes back above the waterline. He’s getting close. A couple more months and he’ll be there. For now I just grab him after a couple of seconds underwater, and hold him under the belly while he heads straight back to do it again.

We’re getting ready to leave and sail north. We needed to pick up a bit of diesel, which sounds like a simple process, but is anything but right now in Puerto Escondido. The marina is being sold and the current owner (the government) is determined to finalize the sale with the fuel dock on E. Kind of like selling a used car for ten thousand dollars but making sure you start the new owner off with an eighth of a tank.

Anyway, the current workaround is for a guy to fill up fifty-gallon drums loaded in the back of his pickup, then deliver it to the boat at the fuel dock with a long hose and an electric pump running off of his car battery.

So I stopped in at the marina office on Saturday, told them how much I needed and set an appointment for two o’clock Monday. Then at noon today I went in and confirmed that they would be there. “Oh yes, no problem.”

We pulled up at two to the sound of crickets. A while later the guy that works on the dock called the diesel delivery guy and told me he’d be an hour.

Okay, whatever. An hour.

An hour, more or less, he reiterated while wiggling his hand back and forth.

At five o’clock he went home for the day and we still had no diesel and none on the horizon.

This Puerto Escondido Marina is a well oiled machine—top notch employees. No doubt about it. If I had two million lying around I sure would be happy to throw it at this place. Think of all the money I would make.