Marina Dock Age, January/February 2004

Escalera Nautica
One Consultant’s Take on Mexico’s Plans to Expand Nautical Tourism
by Dennis P. Kissman

I have been asked on several occasions, by a number of people, to comment on the Mexican government’s proposed “Escalera Nautica” or Nautical Ladder. For those of you not familiar with this plan, it calls for building 27 marinas along the Pacific Coast of Baja California and into the Sea of Cortez to accommodate cruising boats, primarily from California.

I am familiar with the Nautical Ladder because I participated in a three-person consulting group commissioned in 2002 to update the original 1999/2000 plan at the request of the Federal Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur). Our assignment was to either confirm the conclusions of the original study and/or correct or update them.

How it all started

For background, Fonatur was responsible for developing tourist destinations such as Cancun, Ixtapa, and Huatulco, but it has been almost 19 years since its last major project. Escalera Nautica was to be the next big economic development scheme, but before any sound market research had been done, minds were made up to pursue it.

Please understand that I am neither defending nor ridiculing the government’s report as has been done by others in the past. Instead, I want to point out what can happen when data representing a portion of a project is used to justify the whole undertaking. People in the marine industry – including me – who read the I999/2000 study wondered where the original group got their information. For example, the study projected that nearly every boat over 30 feet in length registered in California would likely be cruising in Mexican waters!

Phantom ships

Here’s another example of how the original study went astray: Our group realized that the boating statistics gathered from Mexican port captains may have included duplicate numbers for the same vessels arriving and departing. For instance, if a boat cruised 10 times between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz during one season, each time the boat checked in at port, it was counted as a new arrival. As a result, one boat was counted as twenty new arrivals.   Continue »