Stairway to nowhere

Apparently dead in the water is the Nautical Stairway, much promoted a decade ago as a series of ports along both coasts of Baja California designed to accommodate yachts sailing south from the United States. Part of the program included a “dry canal” for sailors who did not want to make the roughly 2,000-mile trip down one side of the peninsula and then up along the east coast. The “canal” would have offered to transport boats overland from the Pacific to the Sea of Cortés. Bureaucrats predicted that the Stairway would attract some five million yachting enthusiasts annually and that they would spend $7 billion in Mexico every year. Private investors, invited to fund the project, never were convinced. The government did build some installations, but these were not much more than gas stations for boaters, according to some. These the government has been attempting to sell, so far with no luck.

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Jimm Budd

Reporting from Mexico City

Member of the Society of American Travel Writers