Wednesday 9^th January

After 69 hours and 335 miles at sea, it was lovely to see the coastline of Isla de Mujeres. I’m not going to talk much about the passage, because apart from several large cruise ships, 7 flying fish, lots and lots of what I can only describe as ‘glass-like Cornish pasties’ floating past,  there wasn’t a lot to see. Except water and waves and lots and lots of stars. The wind ranged between 15 and 42 knots all the way, which gave us good speed and Roger was a happy boy as we were sailing. Yes, I said SAILING. In fact we managed to sail all the way and ironically had to slow the boat down at one point in order to avoid making landfall at night!!!!!  Yes, Beaujolais lifted her skirts and tripped the light fantastic across the Gulf, at times reaching 8.2 knots!!! I have to admit it was nice to be sailing, without the noise of the engine and even better to have Heidi (the Hydrovane) steering instead of Otto (the autopilot) as she is silent and he isn’t. I used my times on watch to study my Spanish lesson and was also grateful for my MP3 player, which kept me awake on the night watches.

Now, arriving in a new country we have to clear immigration and customs etc, just the same as if you fly in. The only problem is it is a lot more complicated on a boat. We had read many conflicting accounts of the process and many horror stories about the length of time it takes etc. So we were a little apprehensive.

Anyway, we started the process late morning, had an early dinner and were in bed, tired from the trip, by 19.30.

We learned much and I am going to write at length and in detail as a separate entry so as not to bore those of you not interested.