8/18/03

We are extremely saddened to report that our friend "Maquina" Marquez died over the weekend at age 34.

Apparently he fell off a second story roof last week and broke his back. When he was released from the hospital, he fell ill while being transported by ambulance to his home, and so returned to the hospital where he later died of congestive heart failure (if I understood the Spanish correctly.)

Our best wishes to his family, and Vaya con Dios, Maquina!

7/10/03

We've been having trouble accessing our hotmail account, so please direct all email correspondence to marina01@telcel.net.ve.

We're also having trouble with "CADIVI", the new Venezuelan office of foreign currency control. They say it will take at least 40 working days (which is probably about 3 elapsed-time months here in Venezuela) to deposit a U.S. check to our account.

So..., if you need to make a reservation (either for dockage or rooms), please call (or email, if you dare) with your credit card info, or be prepared to do a wire transfer. The wire instructions are:

Account name:  MARINA PORTOFINO C.A.
Account number: 0108-0136-23-0100001616
Bank: BANCO PROVINCIAL, Caracas - Venezuela
SWIFT CODE: BPROVECA
Bank "CORRESPONSAL":  DEUSTCHE BANK
SWIFT CODE: BKTRUS33
ACCOUNT NUMBER OF BANCO PROVINCIAL In DEUSTCHE BANK NEW YORK: 04-015-349
ABA: 02100103

Please send as much as you can, as soon as possible... (That's a joke, of course! But please do: the fishing is great here year 'round, but we need the business to be year 'round too!)

6/12/03

Tournament information for Rick Alvarez' Shootout (October 8-12, 2003) is available from rick@southfishing.com.

Information for Richard Gibson's Grand Slam Tournament (October 16-19, 2003) is available from hiseas@attglobal.net.

5/27/03

Dockage space is filling fast for the fall season, so please call Macuto at 58-414-130-4064 ASAP if you would like to make a reservation. And if you have spoken to one of us but have not yet sent in your deposit check, please remember that your reservation cannot be confirmed until we acknowledge receipt of both a signed contract and your deposit.

Also, if you would like to rent a room or an apartment for your crew (or for yourself) for some or all of the season, please let us know right away so we can start searching for the space you need. It would be best if you could email us your apartment requirements to avoid transcription (or translation!) errors......