May 15, 2014

 We arrived yesterday at Tres Puntas, Guatemala just ten miles from Livingston, the mouth of the Rio Dulce. Rio Dulce will be our new base for the next two or so years. Goodbye to Curacao which was our previous base for the last four and a half years. We will get back to Curacao someday but for now 'The River" will be home. 

We had a 25 hour sail from Utila with not a pirate in sight.. We were in a flotilla of six boats. Three German, one Dutch, one Canadian. We had radio contact with most of the conversations in German leaving only Jim and Renate the Canadians talking English. We did however get a message in English from one of the Germans telling us that they were surrounded by about 50 dolphins.  

For security we had the transponder of our AIS (automatic identification system) turned off. (We could still see the other ships)   We also did not have the mast lights on until close to a ship.

This morning between 0500 and 0530 hrs seven boats left to go and cross the bar at Livingston. There are still five boats here in the anchorage at Tres Puntas all of us going tomorrow. The tide today is a good one but tomorrows is higher. So in the morning at 0500 hrs it will be our time to get to Livingston to cross the mile wide sand bar with all fingers crossed hoping that we get over with no need for an expensive tow...