Last time I posted something I was in Hualtulco, waiting on a weather window. We had one open for at least 4 days and we were off!

First off we had to do our official paperwork tango and it started with a trip to the harbormaster. I’m just going to run through this quickly so that others that follow can have a little hint of what is to come

First get a Zarpe from the harbormaster
Then to the Port Captain for clearance- this will take at least a couple hours, I think you can drop the paperwork and return.
A trip to Immigration is next and they will make an appointment to come down to the boat.
Contact Aduana (Customs) and they will let you know when they can come down as well.
Best to keep your cool and be courteous, the crew that departed the day before us had a little impatience with the process and ended up with a full boat search, dogs and all!

Our experience could not have been further from that, both Immigration and Customs check out was accomplished quickly, so quickly in fact we hardly had time to share a cup of coffee with the agents!

We ended up waiting another couple of hours for a big powerboat to clear the fuel dock and we were off by about 1215.

We started our trip thinking that we would keep close to shore the whole time as is recommended for the T-Pec, but as we started out the skies exploded behind us with an exceptionally large and early in the day thunderstorm! Sail up and drawing well we started opening the trail until we were on a beam reach and moving. But this ran us until we were on a path to be 30-40 miles offshore.

This worked well for us on this trip, but we hit the Tehuantepec on a good day and the weather started dying down. All except for the squalls- and there were some of those! So we turned on the Perkins, Marlon Perkins as we call our engine and started trying to figure out just how to use the TillerPilot combined with the Monitor windvane to drive us while under power, as our ComNav main autopilot was not being cooperative..

Interestingly, this actually worked! By biasing the leads from the Monitor by nearly 90 percent we kept a very clean course with little deviation and very little power draw.

And thus the long drag of motoring began.

While we made decent time and while we had a schedule to keep (crossing the estuary bar was our deadline) this motoring for hours and days on end is far more tiring than being under sail. The boat has an uncomfortable motion as compared to under sail and the engine heat is just added to the already uncomfortable hot air we have to live in.

One big advantage though- we were able to dodge squalls to the most part, by slight changes to course- Slight? Hah! Try some crazy 150 degree changes in course a couple of times, but we did manage to miss most and the ones we did get smacked with were not much more than fire hoses equivalents of water, not much in the way of hard winds or lightning in our face, but it does take a lot of luck and a little bit of good judgment.

Now one thing to watch for offshore is long line fisherman, unbelievably we ran into- not ran into, but close, a long line panga boat almost 40 miles offshore! First thing we communicated between boats was “Bebida frio?” and with some big smiles we tossed over some Cokes, very cold ones as the fridge was actually working that day. After they guided us through their maze of lines, they had several, we thanked them with some cold cervesas and again with some huge smiles!

Later- an hour or two at most- another panga appeared out of nowhere- of course our first instinct is to panic and try to figure out just where we need to steer- but this guy was just interested in where we were heading to and only wanted to visit- he was alone in a small open boat 40 miles from shore. These fisherman are some real mariners.

We crossed into Guatemalan waters just under 48 hours from Huatulco and were welcomed by a huge pod of spinner dolphin. WOW! What a show! If only more people could experience this we wouldn’t have the enslavement of the seaquariums. They were awesome, flying through the air with acrobatics that only comes from joy, these little jesters stayed with us for hours.

More squall dodging that evening and we were able to start picking up a pattern to these storm clouds- they seemed to be pulled out to sea by something bigger than them brewing offshore, this made the course to steer a little easier, but I started to get a little concerned about the longer term. I had seen a stationary low hanging about 200 miles SW of Acapulco when I was doing weather planning and it was this low pressure system that was pulling the energy by us.

I wasn’t going to get too worried until I started seeing the weather change directions and it really did not do that- btw this little low pressure system ended up becoming Hurricane Amanda!

A day and a half later found us crossing into Salvadoran waters and making that last push for harbor. The alternator croaked and we lost power input, it was night so our solar panels really were just an umbrella, and thanks to the folks we last lent the Honda genset to, the carb was messed up enough to not want to run… this has become my life, simply another list of stuff to fix.

But would I trade it? Not a chance! The rewards of being at sea as a voyager are so varied and so rich, that everything else I have done or experienced pales in comparison. It is hard, it is uncomfortable, it is even scary at times- but it is Real- and that is an intentional capital “R”, it is subtle, it is calming, but most of all, it just “is”.

Ok enough waxing poetic

We arrived at the holding zone for crossing the bar to Bahia del Sol and the estuary of Jaltepeque and hour ahead of time- of course I was thinking Central time zone as in Mexico, but there is no daylight savings time here and we are on Central America time.

That is so much better than being an hour late though as we would have had to wait until the next day to surf the bar for entry!

Hooking up with Bill from SV Mita Kuuluu, who is the unofficial ambassador to El Salvador (my opinion is he should get the official title as well) and the panga guide for crossing this exciting section of water, we started into the estuary at slightly before high slack tide with the command from our pilot, “OK full throttle!”

This made me laugh, as “full throttle” means we will hit our top speed in about 5 minutes, and that is only about 6 knots on a good day. With a big cloud of smoke and well wishes from the crew, Papillon surfed the first wave well, if not for long and we were actually starting to gain some speed when the next set of waves picked up the stern and we had a longer surf. Disappointingly, we only had the two sets before we were into the estuary and waters that were boiling with current, but not in any danger of hitting hard bits.

A left turn into the calm waters of the estuary and we spot the marina ahead of us. We see the crew awaiting our lines and pull into the slip, a little current messing with us, but a good landing just the same. Greeted with a nice cold iced tea, we take our first steps on solid ground in four days and promptly realize we have to get our “land legs” back!

A very quick visit with immigration and a little chat with the Port Captain later and we are officially in El Salvador!