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BLUE WATER NEWSLETTER NO. 13, OUR PLANS FOR 2007
Dear all
On our last day in Rio Dulce, Guatemala, it is time for a short newsletter. In the almost five months since the last one we have done a lot of things: We have finished the conversion of S/Y Manatee into M/V Manatee, we have made plans for 2007, we enjoyed live in general, we have changed our 2007 plans, we have converted Manatee into a temporary motor sailing vessel and now we are ready to go.
Today we will sail downriver to Livingston on the Caribbean coast where we will check out of Guatemala after almost nineteen months here. Then we will slowly sail up the coast of Belize and from there hop across to Cuba. This trip we will make with a crew/passenger, Ernst Hangartner from Switzerland. We intend to spend about two weeks on the south coast of Cuba and then go to Mexico, mainly the famous Isla Mujeres. The next stop then should be Big Pine Key in Florida, if the US let us in, to visit an old friend from Bank of America. Should we not be allowed into the States we will go back to the north coast of Cuba and then from there to the Bahamas. In May we will set sail for Bermuda from where, in June, we will cross the Atlantic to the Azores and Europe!
Originally we wanted to return to Europe only in 2008 after the big circle in the States and we wanted to ship Manatee on a freighter. As the latter turned out to be much more expensive than originally envisaged (20,000 USD instead of 6,000 USD) we decided to sail back on our own keels and as four of our friends had the plan to do this trip this year we decided to join them and give the big circle a miss. So in June there should be five boats leaving from Bermuda for the Azores. We will let you know if that really happens because other people on boats change their plans as easily as us.
For those of you who really want to know where we are exactly our genius webmaster Bruno Grutsch has created an automatic position feed from Manatee to our webpage. The system is in test mode till we are in Cuba and during this time you have to go to the following link: http://www.mvmanatee.net/ship_position_view.asp. After Cuba that information will be displayed on our normal page www.mvmanatee.net. During our trip we have no internet access, at least not before Cuba, so if you want to write to us please do so to our on-board email address manatee@skymate.com. Please remember that we can only receive short plain text messages (no attachments, no forwards, photos etc.)
This is all for the moment, we will keep you informed.
Have a good time.