We are flying! Estamos volando!

Our last update was mid-evening two days ago. To recap, the anchorage we wanted was too shallow, so we had to night-sail for 2 hours or so. We ended up finding another anchorage in about half the distance we thought we would need and dropped anchor around 8:00pm – it felt like 10pm with the 3 preceding hours of darkness and tiredness from waking at 4am.

The following day (yesterday) was a short one. We had the option to travel 36 miles or over 100. We obviously opted for the first option, thereby putting our estimated arrival in Mobile, AL at Saturday, rather than Friday – still 4 days earlier than we’d thought a week ago. It’s funny how little we can accurately predict when we will be in a given spot on this trip. Cruisers are notoriously bad at keeping schedules or even having plans, sailing cruisers are even worse because their travels are so weather dependent. Add the rivers’ limited anchorages to the equation and a broken transmission and our schedule has been varying by weeks or months, but I digress…

The 36-mile day was a welcome respite between the previous 16-hour day and today’s 11-hour day. We found our anchorage around 1pm and it was just about everything we could wish for.  “Cochrane cutoff” is a loopy bit of the river that was bypassed by a man-made canal – a cutoff. For us, it offered perfect 9-foot/3-meter depths, not a bit of civilization in site, incredible vine-covered trees and foliage bathing in the shallow shore waters, a full accompaniment of birdsong and best of all, temperatures pushing 80 degrees F/26 degrees C.

Caye was overjoyed by the temperature and location. I, in the meantime, was having a bit of a grumpy-attack and couldn’t quite seem to appreciate the situation or say anything positive. In colloquial English, we would call this “being a wet blanket”. The funk was of course totally unfounded and inexplicable. With a bit of poking and prodding from Caye, I quickly recovered and opened my eyes to the incredible situation in which I found myself – in the most awe-inspiring anchorage of the trip and in love with my best friend. After this episode passed, we put on shorts for the first time in three months and got straight to work on the multitude of internet projects that occupy most of our free-time. Fast internet and our new battery meant that we were able to put in a good 5 hours working. We were ecstatic – the projects are fun and challenging and it feels so good to be productive. Both this site and our web hosting and development company are improving and expanding – the fruits of some of this work will be rolled out over the next weeks.
Stay tuned