Departing for El Salvador

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

014-41.920 N
092-23.480 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

This is just a quick note to let people know that today we should be departing on the first leg of our journey. Our initial destination is Barillas, El Salvador, which is 270 nm from here, but we may continue on to the Gulf of Fonseca, which is 35 miles past Barillas. It's a 10 mile trip up a river to get to Barillas, which will take 2 hours. There's a good weather window to be in the Gulf of Fonseca this weekend, so we may just take advantage of that.

Note that you can always see our current position by going to my home page (www.GeoffSchultz.org) and clicking on the link under "Latest Position" or you can directly go SpotWalla, which I use to map our progress.

What is also interesting is that we'll be passing San Jose, Guatemala where my dad used to fly into as a pilot during WW II. He flew from Brownsville, TX to San Jose to Panama. I believe that the photo of my dad was taken at San Jose.

We've been very busy getting BlueJacket ready for the trip. All of the systems are functioning well after resolving some initial hiccups, which always occur when so many complex systems have sat unused for 6+ months. Among other things, Sue has been provisioning the boat and I'm just amazed at how she has made lots and lots of stuff disappear into the boat. I'm not sure where everything has gone, but as long as she knows, we're in good shape.

The transition from Boston winter to humid 70s at night and 90s during the day has been tough. Every day has basically been the same with clear blue skies, which is nice, but it's hard to work on deck for hours in the sun.

It's been fun catching up with old cruising friends and making new ones. We got to see Dan, Lisa and Savannah from s/v Endorfin and Don and Cathy from Wild Rose. Endorfin has already headed S, but we hope to catch up with them very soon. Wild Rose will probably depart for El Salvador today.

Well, I've got to get running as we have lots of last minute projects to do and we have the Mexican navy showing up in a few hours with a dog to search the boat for drugs. So unless Sue got something that I don't know about, we should be out of here sometime around noon and will be arriving at one of the 2 destinations on Friday.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 2223