Escaped the Rio

Been a busy 10 days leading up to leaving the river. Installed the new Autopilot, finished installing the watermaker and a heap of other little jobs as well as storing up ready to leave. Also had to do a survey for our insurance which we did at our Friend Casey's place in Cayo Quemado, a magic quiet little place down the river.
Checking out wasn't as hard as we thought. After 3 months you have to extend your cruising permit which we didn't do choosing to pay the fine which we were sceptical about. The permit is $150, earlier in the year we asked customs what the fine is, $300 but you get a 75% discount so it will only be $75?! We weren't convinced but went with it and when it did come time to check out $75 was all we paid for customs, $40 for harbour master and $10 per person at immigration. I'm saying this as most people use the local Agent here and he charges a LOT more for his fees and it really wasn't hard at all although Julie does speak Spanish.
We also did a bit of a survey in the dinghy over the sand bar with our portable depth sounder, figured it's shallow right across so the waypoints don't matter a hell of a lot. We went on a spring tide at 67cm (supposedly) very nervously. We hung the dinghy with 100 litres of water from the spinnaker pole to give us a bit of a list to port and the plan was to hit it fast and that's what we did. 5 knots and there was a little bit of chop with the sea breeze and as soon as we started touching I gave it full power and we only slowed to 3.5kts pushing on through the mud, not a nice feeling as it was in the dark but we made it through, stoked!! After packing up the dinghy we motored north 25 miles following a previous track and anchored at midnight at the Bedford Cays in Belize. The next day we sorted a problem with the plumbing for the watermaker and it is now all working fine, very happy. I also managed to find time to spear 2 very nice red snapper which we've been eating the las
t few days.
We then carried on to Placencia and got wifi and a few more stores and downloaded a great grib file weather forecast that looks like we have a good window to leave Wednesday/Thursday for Panama or maybe Colombia? So we are heading north now to exit the Barrier reef and will also put us well north of Honduras where there has been a lot of trouble with piracy so our plan is to spend an extra few days at sea and keep well clear.
So now we wait a few days and hopefully catch a few more fish:)
And happy to report the Simrad Nac-3 autopilot is amazing and the watermaker seems to be making 25litres of very tasty water per hour and Julie's patience with me rushing about is just about holding out!!
Update-Julie just swam with dolphins and is super happy