- The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.
The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shown in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.
We spent the spring cruising Belize. We tried twice to get to Roatan but the weather was blowing very hard from the southeast most of the season and we never got there. So instead we dove on Lighthouse Reef, met and hung with new old friends, and really got inside the details of cruising Belize.
A Tough Springtime in Belize
After clearing out of Guatemala with our new Copper Coat, we intended to run up the Belize barrier reef then cross to Roatan. After nearly two weeks, not cleared in and waiting on weather, we gave up and returned to Placencia to clear in. The SE trade winds were just not backing off and we had pushed things about as far as we thought we could with the Belezian officialdom. Three days after clearing in to Belize there was a decent window to Roatan, arrggh.
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| Final state of our fancy new CopperCoat bottom paint |
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| Arnie Juarez and his team cheering on our re-launch |
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| The new Cerca Trova visits Monkey Bay Marina on Valentines Day |
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| Belize Black Orchid at Monkey Bay |
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| Orchid at Monkey Bay |
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| The waterfront at Livingston Guatemala |
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| sv Blue Jacket under sail for Lighthouse Reef |
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| A very fine breakfast including jam from Vermont |
On our way back out to Lighthouse, anchored along the west side of Turneffe Atoll, we met up with long-time Belize cruisers mv Chickcharnie and mv My Island Queen. My Island Queen showed us how to cut through the middle of Turneffe and save 20 miles on the run from Cay Caulker to Lighthouse. With this short cut, the trip from Cay Caulker to Lighthouse drops to roughly 65 miles which is doable in one long day of travel. This would allow us to stay out at Lighthouse and only return to Caye Caulker just ahead of bad weather.
We learned a lot more from these seasoned boats beyond the short-cut. They taught us tips on fishing which led to us landing our first Mahi Mahi on our next jump to Lighthouse. We learned about the state of fishing within Belize, it's not good and the locals are now turning to deep-line fishing, which takes the breeding stock, in order to keep their catches up. We learned how to actually land a mahi mahi (very soft mouths so have to be gentle despite how hard they fight). We learned that doctor fly season runs about the time we were there - doctor flies are vicious deer flies that make deep punctures which you can't feel until a day later when the bites swell into welts. We learned about some great, tucked away anchorages for the trip to and from the Rio Dulce. And we learned their truism "it's called pleasure-boating - if its' not pleasurable you shouldn't be doing it."
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| Our very first ever successfully landed Mahi Mahi, caught on our way to Lighthouse |
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| Anchorage at Caye Caulker |
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| Sunset from the "back" side of Caye Caulker |
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| A troop of travelling circus performers one night at Restaurant Suggestion Gourmet |
We got back out to Lighthouse, squeezed in another set of dives, and then after only a week on-site, we had to leave to put the boat on a dock for Easter week so we could meet friends on a previously-booked trip to the British Virgin Islands on the only time-share we have ever been sucked into, on crewed sailing catamarans. It was a real treat to have a pro crew look after us, feed us, deal with the boat logistics, get us to all the great places. But we had to leave CT tied up safe during the busiest week in Belize. We found a spot at the nicer marina in Placencia and got there just ahead of the rush of power boats coming from Guatemala for "Semana Santa". Had a nice dinner and caught our plane two days later for the BVI's via Miami and Puerto Rico. We had a great time, it was soooo nice to be having that much fun and all the headaches were someone else's. And we spent enough time in San Juan to really see the charms there. We will definitely go back.
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| Sprightly sail inside the reef at Lighthouse |
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| A Lighthouse sunset |
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| Cerca Trova running down to Placencia passing a school ship motor-sailing the other way (photo courtesy sv Blue Jacket) |
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| Hanging at the Placencia marina while we set up to fly to the BVIs |
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| Road Town Harbor, BVI |
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| Francis Drake Channel from The Baths |
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| Scrambling around The Baths |
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| The world-famous Bubbly Pool |
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| Our charter buddies, and Skipper Guy in the foreground |
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| Castillo of Old San Juan |
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| Astounding antique Swiss chandelier at the bar of the Conrad San Juan |
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| Equally astounding street of umbrellas in Old San Juan |
With that decision made, we hoofed it from Placencia to Cay Caulker, 100 miles in 2 days, much of it into the wind, and ... waited for a weather window. sv Blue Jacket was there and so was our first-ever cruising buddies sv Take Two, there doing the same waiting for a window north, although they were headed to Isla Mujeres. We have been to Isla twice for a month each and know hard it is to get out of there across the Yucatan current and fight due east into the prevailing winds. Our better idea was to jump directly from Belize, ride the Yucatan current north while bearing gently east to graze the western tip of Cuba called Cabo San Antonio, then wrap around there, catch the Gulf Stream and ride it all the way to Key West. Great plan, weather window arrived, and then the night before we were going to jump I discovered on my pre-passage checks we had water in both sail drives. This is like having saltwater in your transmission, really bad news.
A week after getting back to Belize we had to turn back from the threshold and go back to the Rio Dulce for repairs.
"Once more on to the concrete, dear friends!"
We love the Rio. The easy pace, the lovely people, our many friends among the ex-pats and cruisers. But we got there pushing hard (2 and half days and 150 miles nearly all under sail to save the motors), rushed through paperwork to clear back in, a quick stop at Cayo Quemado, and up to the boat lift of RAM Marina. We had been on the phone with them as we ran down the coast of Belize so they had our parts already on order and, in fact, the parts got there before we were even hauled out.
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| Cerca Trova (left) and unknown boat at entry to Cayo Quemado |
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| Cerca Trova at anchor off of Cayo Quemado |
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| Cooling swim in El Golfete |
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| Sunset over the eastern end of El Golfete |
The repairs took a week on the hard. We spent a total of two weeks in the Rio, waiting for tasks and making sure the boat was operating correctly after the haul-out. We lucked out with lodging (conditions in the boat yard were in the mid-90's and utterly windless, we *had* to have A/C and a quiet room to stay in) and our good friends Lobis and Jim of Punta Bonita had our own little casita available for us. So we stayed there, it was sooo comfortable after our very rough cruising season. At the boat yard, the machinist and the mechanic were top-notch. We also squeezed in a significant carpentry repair project while waiting for various sub-projects, carpentry work that would have cost us an arm and a leg in the US, and got our brand new gel coat waxed and polished. Then back into the water, a motor run back down the river to Cayo Quemado (the new seals were doing their job!), one last chicken-fry at Texas Mini-Mikes, and away down the river to clear out. Somehow in there we had a chance to meet more new old friends, who have built a house at Cayo Quemado and cruise Belize in the good months, and who took us for Sunday lunch at a cool place on the banks of the Rio just up from Livingston.
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| Old sleeves on drive shaft (note grooving) |
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| New sleeve on drive shaft |
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| Back into the water after the repairs |
But it was now near the end of May and the weather was turning to the summer pattern - no wind, and lots of thunder storms), we really needed to hoof it to get out of there. We cleared out at Livingston on our way past, Raul's service agency Servamar did a smashing quick job of that and got us out of there just before the next rainstorm hit, and we pushed up to one of those new-to-us anchorages we had learned about from the old-time Belize cruising crowd back in Turneffe. From there we pushed into a north east wind for 50 miles, by-passing Placencia all together, to the little range of cays called the Pelicans with the one-room eco-resort Hide-Away Cay (http://www.hideawaycaye.com/), where our friends Dustin and Kim treat passing cruisers (and their one-room guest(s)) to right-off-the-reef seafood dinners. It was our 20th anniversary and we had to just stop for a breather. So we did.
Breather over, we were again back to pushing north. We made it 60 miles that day to another "hidden" anchorage we had learned about this year, only a few miles outside of Belize City but utterly hidden in quiet mangroves, but now it was so hot and so full of mosquitos and noseeums we had to close the boat and run the boat's A/C on the generator all night. We made it through that Night of Bugs and Heat and high-tailed it to Cay Caulker. To wait, again, for a weather window north.
We got one after about a week. It was clear that conditions would be very rough for the first 24hrs out of Belize but, if we could get through that, then things would settle down and the rest of the run to Cabo San Antonio would be pretty benign. Many thanks to our patient and professional weather forecaster, Chis Parker. One last lovely dinner at Pasta Per Caso and off we went.
Yah, it was rough with 6ft seas hitting us on the beam all night until we were nearly to Cozumel. But then things did start to settle down. So much so that by that evening we had our whole mainsail up as we crossed the Yucatan Trench towards Cuba. We usually pull in a reef for the night, and in doing so this time we discovered that two of the cars which hold our sail to the mast had broken. Fortunately these cars were below the second reef level, so we pulled the sail down to second reef and continued overnight. We had 2-3 knots of current carrying us forward and were making respectable speed despite the double reef and modest wind. We arrived at dawn at Cabo San Antonio and anchored inside the point to make repairs as best we could. We had *sailed* the whole way, 350 miles in 50 hours and only used the engines to charge batteries and for that final maneuvering to anchor. Gotta love a good strong current when it's working for you.
We couldn't fix the broken cars but we did fix the problem that had caused them to break, which left us stuck on the second reef until we could get back to the US and get new parts. We took an extra night there at Cabo San Antonio to rest and then took off inside their reef, anchoring twice before jumping out a cut in the reef and making for Key West. That whole section of north west Cuba is a national park that's 100 miles of nearly deserted mangroves and reefs. Truely lovely untouched ecology. Maybe the best cruising we had had all year. Two fisherman did turn up and sold us the largest lobsters and snapper we had seen all year, for $20US. The best thing we can do to break down the Cuban military regime is teach the citizens the benefits of free enterprise. They seem to be catching on. But what will that do to these last remaining wild places?
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| Mast track separation that caused the car failures |
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| Squall over Cayo Buena Vista |
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| Squall chasing us up the reef |
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| After the squalls, before turning for Key West |
Again, we set off into the current. Timing, current and weather were with us. We had the current (now called the Gulf Stream) pushing us directly NE towards the Keys and essentially no easterly wind. When the easterly trades pump up against the Gulf Stream, a lethal sea state can develop, one that will wreak havock with large ships much less little cruising boats like us. Ie. we had no wind against us, a benign sea state, and plenty of helping current, all good. The mainsail was limited to just the second reef but we had to motor anyway due to there being no wind. We were moving so well that we decided to motor our way past Key West all the way to Marathon and the wonderful cruisers' harbor at Boot Key. Overall, that was 180 miles we did in 30 hours.
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| One more mahi on our way to Key West |
Phew! Back in the U S A.
Oh, I forgot to mention, our fridge/freezer had decided to lose all it's coolant on the run from Belize to Cuba. I replaced that on anchor at Cabo San Antonio, but we knew it was just a matter of time before the whole thing went belly up and we lost all our cold stores, including another mahi mahi that decided to take our lure just at sunset going into the Gulf Stream.
Job #1 at Marathon was to replace the broken sail cars. And #2 was get the fridge system replaced. Both were accomplished in a week and we took CT out for a trial overnight on anchor. Weeell, the sail car replacement was a total success but that brand new and very expensive refer system was barely working.
Back to the Boot Key harbor and another call to the installers (whom we have known since our very first stop there years ago and been wrestling with the refer). They came back out on short notice, examined their work and declared it was working correctly. But it just wasn't effectively cooling the way our old until had. What a PITA. In the end we agreed to return in the fall and let them make it right, because, as much as we enjoy the scene at Boot Key, we really really wanted to get out of there and up to our summer base in Ft. Pierce.
OK, off we went again, with overnight stops at Key Largo and Key Biscayne, then an overnight passage to get us all the way from Miami to Ft. Pierce. We hit the Ft. Pierce channel as the out-going tide was beginning to die down, anchored off the marina until that had a slip for us, and went in on a now-slack tide to tie up.
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| Sunrise off Stuart FL as we finish our passage north |
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| On our summer dock in Fort Pierce |
We are off and away, by plane this time, in a week.
