WOW!!!

Not sure how to cram all the info and pics into this blog for a month’s time frame but I’ll try. Could divide it up but it’s all so fluidly intertwined it needs to be done together.

“Call me Ishmael”... Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, 1851

Oh, I promise it won’t be THAT long 😉

“It was a dark & stormy night”... A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle, 1962 (amongst 3 other books that start w/that line; along w/a Snoopy cartoon)

Maybe closer to this one, not as dramatic though; however we did get our Tesla car’s name “Tesseract” from this book.

Quit diddling around and just get to it! Ok fine! We needed to re-up our Belize immigration & boat papers on Feb 6th, so we got back to Placencia to do so. Met up w/Claire & Adrian, Flyin Lo yet again and made plans to sail north w/them for a couple of days. We had an absolutely fabulous sail; since the outer reefs protect the Inner Passage from ocean swell, smooth sailing as it were until the last 30 minutes where Rory was acting like a dolphin and poked her nose under the water a few times as the winds picked up to the upper 20’s (kts) and we were cruising at 8+ knots. Wow, it was fun. We were going to introduce them to Sapodilla Lagoon since we were going there to surprise Françoise and Jean for a final goodbye. The Lagoon was beautiful that evening w/the water being quite flamboyant in its bioluminescence. Wish pictures would take of that, even wish more that some dolphins would have swam by giving a ghostlike apparition. But, nope. Did get morning/aft/evening shots tho.

Claire & Adrian were approaching departure time from Belize and wanted to get to one good snorkeling spot before they left. The winds dictated that we head to South Water Cay from Sapodilla for such an adventure. The ‘plan’ then was to head back to Placencia with them; our provisions were getting low. Lo & behold, we approach South Water Cay & there were Tony & Lucie on Pocaterra. They were meeting some friends there. Plans were made to all go snorkeling in an hour. Now entering our sailing realm, Krista & Phil on Harmonium Cays, an Island Packet 380. Snorkeling in that area was phenomenal as the coral is not as bleached as it is in some areas and the fish population is very diverse. I see my first reef shark! Did anyone else see it? No. Was I scared? No, it was beautiful (and swimming away from me). The evening then commenced to sundowner hour at a beach bar followed up by a dinner at the resort on the island. A LOT of talking ensued. Tony was commenting that the winds were going to be superb in a few days to sail to not one but two of the three Belizian atolls. The good winds were to come on the back of some ‘bad’ winds. Dilemma: what to do? Should Rory go back to Placencia as ‘planned’ or should she jump on the opportunity to go to the atolls. We (I mostly) hemmed & hawed over the decision and came to the conclusion YOLO (you only live once)! My biggest lament was that I only had one onion to last 13 days, OMG; the world was going to end!!! Krista, quietly listened then later on ferried 2 onions to me 🙂 Claire & Adrian were comfortable sailing back to Placencia by themselves and were not upset w/us, just upset that they didn’t have the opportunity to come w/.

Below: Flyin Lo, a Taswell 49. snorkling K, example of coral bleaching, red dot is South Water Cay.

Back to the enough onions decision made. Mentioned were good winds following bad. We needed to find a place to ‘hide’ from the bad winds which were forecast to be 25-35kts. Luckily we were less than 3 miles away from a great hidey hole. Twin Cays had a very protected lagoon so we left early to get a ‘good’ spot since it would probably be a popular place for others as well. And it was. Our three boats, spaced ourselves apart beautifully and along comes 3 other boats to screw that all up. When wind blows, you want enough space between boats in the case ones anchor starts to drag. 2 of the 3 were ‘charter’ catamarans. Unfortunately the stereotype that most charter cruisers are clueless is more true than not. More due diligence is required and one does not sleep very well if at all. At 2:00am even before the winds kicked up D yells at me (attempting to sleep) ‘You gotta come here, am I seeing things?” I bolt out of bed and go into the cockpit where D was. And I state “nope you’re not seeing things that catamaran is dragging” and was drifting quickly past us and into the mangroves. So yelling at the boat, flashing our spotlight at them does not wake them. D gets out the airhorn (loud) and does the 3 short blasts which gets someone into the cockpit. They of course freak out and pull up anchor, extract themselves from the mangroves and proceed to plunk down WAY too close to us. We called them on it and they moved. The rest of the nite & day during high winds went w/out drama. Come to find out that the boat only put 6m (18ft) of chain out; not enough for anything really.

Wall of rum (I mean shame) I mean rhum. Never try to keep up w/Canadians while drinking rum. Heck, they can’t keep up w/themselves sometimes. We had just met Phil & Krista on South Water and they graciously invited us and Tony & Lucie to sundowner hour our first nite in Twin Cays before the winds were to pick up. Out came one bottle of rum, then finish off a partial, then try another; oh, and what about this one. Geez, talk about too much, with only appetizers to eat, good as they were, no help. No one was feeling too perky the next morning, heck the whole day. Hence above D asking me if he was seeing things.

Spent 2 days hiding out then went back to South Water Cay to stage for heading out to the atolls. As indicated in the picture above, one takes the South Water Cut to get outside the reef system and onwards to the atolls. And we had one more opportunity to snorkel.

The ‘good’ winds from the SE actually showed up and the entourage of 3 boats left. Going thru the cut was dicey but a non-event. Initially the ocean swell and wave patterns were conflicting due to the N winds the previous day; IE washing machine effect. That calmed down a bit and we got to the south end of Turneffe and anchored in a cove. The forecast had changed and we were to get 2 more days of ‘bad’ winds (from the N). The anchorage we were in was somewhat protected from the north but the bottom wasn’t the best at holding for anchoring. No other choice. Manny, our 65lb Mantus anchor held firm even through a 180 degree shift in 20-40kt winds. Pocaterra and Harmonium Cays both dragged. Twice. When that happens in Belize, you often only have minutes to respond accordingly or something really bad is going to happen. They both did fine. We (us & Rory) did a deep bow to Manny.

More snorkeling ensued, however the water was COLD, but the fish were amazing!

No north winds can stop this from happening.

Time to head the 18nm to Lighthouse Reef atoll. Lighthouse is the more pristine of the 3 atolls. We chose to anchor outside the Nat’l park by Long Cay. Better protection from the prevailing E winds of the next few days. All this talk about atolls; what exactly is an atoll? According to National Geographic, an atoll is a ring-shaped coral reef, island, or series of islets. An atoll surrounds a body of water called a lagoon. They formed up to 30 million yrs ago from underwater volcanos lava flow that eventually reached the surface of the water becoming an island. Corals began growing around the island forming a limestone barrier. The volcanic islands eventually erode away and leave the coral reefs behind. Some of limestone reefs in the ‘ring’ get repeatedly broken up by waves and form sandy beaches where seeds etc get deposited and forms an island.