couple of us were wondering how it was going to shake out. The old PRI party took over and they were noted for turning a blind eye to "mordida" collected by every two bit official that anyone had to deal with. Five dollars to check in, five dollars to check out at immigration, customs and, of course, ten dollars at for the Capatania de Puerto. When the PRI took over, all the old officials were booted out and their jobs were filled by supporters of the PRI candidates. apparently, some of the officials cooked up the idea of checking the TIP's of local boaters and impounding those with improperly filled out forms. The "Temporary Import Permit" is one of the five or six papers you need to fill out when first entering the country and allows you to leave the boat in Mexico longer then the 180 days allowed by the tourist visa. It seems from what I have heard is that these forms were checked against the HIN NUMBER (located on the stb. aft side of the stern) and either the HIN was improperly written down on the form or the HIN was missing. They might have zeroed in on other minor mistakes on the form as well but rumor has it that it was the HIN that they were looking at. Boats like Spinler's Profflegate (I'm sure I miss spelled both his name and that of his boat) that were either custom, home made or repaired might not have shown the HIN in the proper place. The they claim that Mexican rules also require that you have an additional HIN written somewhere else on the boat that is hidden and only known to the owner. Some place like under a stanchion base or somehow bonded into the hull in an out of the way place. They might have taken this suggestion that has been around a long time and decided that it was part of the law in order to collect a few more bucks. It also could be some zealots interpretation of that suggestion. The PRI has always been noted as the party of the bribe and it looks like having to bribe your way through Mexico might be back. They picked the wrong boat to f$%K with when they picked the boat owned by the owner of a major boating magazine. It will be interesting to see what happens.