We did it! We escaped from Guatemala! YEAH! For a while there I wasn't sure that we would make it out, but we did. It sure felt great to hit salt water again. We crossed the bar at Livingston at 10 AM with a 1.1' high tide. We briefly saw 5.8', but most of the time it was 6.0'. That's not a lot of water considering that we draw 5.5'. But we made it without bumping.
We had taken the sail covers off in anticipation of 10-15 kts of wind out of the E. Instead we had less than 5 kts, at times hovering in the 1-2 kt range. We motored about 38 miles in flat seas. Oh well, not exactly great sailing weather, but it was a good day to make sure that everything was working on the boat.
Before we left the GPS antenna on the RayMarine autopilot stopped working. No problem I thought as I could feed it position information from my Northstar 961 chart plotter. I tested it in the marina and everything seemed to be working well. Not quite. It would get the position when I first turned it on, but wouldn't update it as we moved. I spent most of the trip changing setting on the Northstar, RayMarine autopilot computer and the new RayMarine C80 radar. I finally determine that it was a software bug in the C80 which I was able to resolve by unplugging a cable. I notified RayMarine and hopefully they'll fix it.
We had a wonderful Valentine's dinner in the cockpit under clear skies and a quarter moon. We prepared stir fried curry shrimp and a summer Panzanella (tomatoes, fresh croutons and Parmesean) and a 1997 bottle of Mondavi SLD Cabernet that we brought from home.
I realized that my waypoints into here were a bit thin. Here's a much better set to get into here. You could drive in here in the dark with these:
1) 16-23.412N 88-27.651W
2) 16-23.743N 88-27.820W Form arc between waypoints 2-4
3) 16-23.802N 88-27.820W
4) 16-23.902N 88-27.763W
5) 16-23.932N 88-27.668W Anchorage or anywhere in here
-- Geoff & Sue
Log ID: 630
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