crossing or surfing over the bar into Bahia del Sol, El Salvador

13 18.071'N:88 53.527'W

Well we are here! No one told me we were going to go ACROSS the bar, I thought we were going AROUND it! As Bill says, "yes, it was probably a good thing that I didn't really know what was going on". Of course when we CROSSED the sand bar it was windy making for lots of larger waves. Bill, our pilot called the waves breaking around us, 'pushes'. As in a little push or a BIG push. WELL our big push doubled our speed from 5.5 knots (motoring) to 12 knots (Raven's hull speed is 7 knots by the way)! It took both of us, Scott & I, to drive Raven though as Scott had all he could do to hold on to the tiller so I had to work the throttle, look at the speed and compass - all of this was fine with me becasue I decided earlier that I wasn't going to look at all. Still there's seeing things (like the waves breaking around us) out of the corner of your eye!

All this after running out of fuel earlier, only 16 miles away, putting the dinghy together, having m/v Whaho come ot our resuce with 6 more gallons. Then having to bring the 80lb outboard engine onto Raven before crossing the bar: it was like having a pointed wrecking ball swinging around from all the 'bucking mechanical bull' action (again) from all the wind and waves, this time with 2 boats - Raven and the dinghy. And all I thought I had to do today was bathe and clean up Raven for our 1st Customs Inspection! Wha. Ha. Ha. Ha!

There were 10 people on the dock to welcome us to El Salvador and ask us what we thought of our crossing. All we could think about was how we were going to get back out!

The Officals came out to the boat to start our check-in process and we followed them to the air conditioned hotel office to await the return of or passports. Met lots of new crusiers - most are our age-ish or younger! Had a nice dinner at the marina bar, cleared off our bunk and settled in for a good nights sleep!