Just a quick update to let everyone know where we are. We arrived in Guatemala on Mon 2/10 checked in and headed up the Rio Dulce (sweet river) Quite an experience since I have no charts for this area and there are no aids to navigation on the river. Lots of cruising boats come up here though, so how hard can it be.
Most of the river is 50′ or deeper right up to the shore so I got a little over-confident. We were all admiring the country side when the next thing you know we’re in the middle of two fisherman’s gaggle of crab traps. They use old plastic oil jugs for floats to mark their locations. Not overly visible from the helm of Stray Catz. I didn’t realize I had left the channel, or for that matter there even was a channel, so I was surprised by this
I tried to steer through the maze of traps without getting trapped myself or worse snagging a trap line around the prop. We didn’t snag a line around the prop, but we did snag a couple of them around the rudder and started dragging them with us up the river. I’m sure this was funny to any other observer as this fisherman in his dugout canoe started chasing us yelling something in Spanish that none of us understood, but we just wanted to let this poor guy get his traps back. In just a few moments the traps dropped off the boat and we were back in the channel and on our way again.
We stopped in Cayo Quemado for the night and now we’re in Fronteras. I’ll add more later with some pictures.