Just a very quick update here on Monday morning. I just found out this is supposed to be a holiday weekend for those in the USA so happy Memorial Day weekend to all of you in the USA!!
We had a good sleep while anchored here in Puerto Angel and have just finished our check in procedures here with the Port Captains office. They now inform us that the can't check us in and out fully as they don't have immigration and customs offices here and we need to go to Huatulco (wah-tool-koh) (wah-tool-koh) and go through the several day process of visiting the Port Captain there, Immigration, Customs, banks (to pay fees) etc. So instead we are going to use the existing papers we have from officially fully checking out of Mexico when we left La Paz 2 weeks ago and just use those to check in to Guatemala. We'll see how it goes.
We are doing this largely because we got the updated weather patterns this morning and they show it to be good weather all the way across the dreaded Bay of Tehuantepec with its "T-pecker" storms (no I'm not making that up!) until Thursday. We should only take about 2 1/2 days to get across at the speeds we've been doing and so we are going to take advantage of this clear weather window to make the jump across Tehuantepec to San Jose Guatemala. There is a very good, albeit apparently very expensive marina Pez Vela there with full facilities, clearance agents and a well protected commercial harbor if we need to wait out some of the storms that are brewing way down South of Central America and may work their way North along the west coast. More typically these storms and hurricanes move NW and out into the Pacific but of course you never know.
So we going to pull up anchor here in Pt. Angel in a few minutes and head straight across Tehuantepec as fast as possible for San Jose Guatemala. We'll keep our eyes on those weather patterns down south and if they don't come up the west coast we may continue past Guatemala and go to El Salvador to what is supposed to be a very lovely marina and hiding hole off the Bahia Jiquilisco(Hi-ki-lis-co). It is a bit tricky to get into as there are bars across the entrance but there are Pilot pangas that will guide you in and over the bar, past the shoals where the breakers are scary and nine miles up the river to Barillas marina. Reports from other cruisers indicate that they have mooring buoys ($11-20) per day in the river, surrounded by mangroves and alongside a very nice resort with pool, spa bath, bar, restaurant, hammocks swung in palm trees, all in all, a nice little stop. El Salvador is only about 13 degrees latitude so still not quite out of the possible hurricane area, but El Salvador has never been hit to date.
As you can see my First Mate Ruby(with her buddy Mr. Pig) is quite stressed by all of this but hopefully she will calm down when we are at sea again as she usually does.
And so we are off! Will reconnect again with you here when we get our next web connection, likely not till Thursday or so when we get to Guatemala or El Salvador. We'll have our SPOT messenger turned on the whole way so feel free to go to this map to see exactly where we are at any time. Once we get below the hurricane zone and can rest up and and enjoy Costa Rica I'll figure out how to embed this map into the blog itself to make it easier for you to see where we are, but in the meantime many of you have already said how much you're enjoying following those "breadcrumbs" we are leaving in our wake. We REALLY appreciate your interest and especially your Emails, text messages and calls so do keep those coming. Catch you on the other side of Tehuantepec!
Aboard s/v Learnativity
see the Learnativity blog @ http://learnativity.typepad.com for pictures, updates and more
When near land:
Global mobile phone for voice calls, SMS text messages and voicemail whenever near land +1-707-803-3579
Email: [email protected]
When far out at sea:
Satellite phone when out at sea: First dial +1-480-768-2500 then enter our sat phone # 881631640570
Sat phone based Email (text ONLY + under 50k please!) [email protected]
Sat phone based text messages: http://messaging.iridium.com/
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