Belize
Maria la Gorda, Cuba to Lighthouse Reef, Belize, June 4-7, 2007. Lighthouse Reef to Glover's Reef, Belize, June 9. Glover's Reef, Belize to Livingston, Guatemala, June 13.
For nearly a week we had been hanging off a scrap bare mooring on the unprotected shelf at Maria la Gorda, Cuba. Nigel Calder's excellent guidebook to cruising Cuba warns that Maria la Gorda is no place to hang out for an extended stay. Sure, the snorkeling and diving are spectacular, but there is absolutely no protection from the west or southwest. The holding is poor at best -- a thin layer of sand over a coral bottom. And if the weather should happen to stir itself up and the wind should clock to the west, you'd be left hanging, stern to a lee shore, just rolling in the wide open seaway.
And that's pretty much how it happened for us. We sailed to Maria la Gorda for the sole reason of checking out of Cuba properly. We intended to stay there for one night, maybe two, then hightail it for Honduras. We arrived from Cayo Juan Garcia in fine weather, and the following evening, thinking that we had a good weather window for the three day sail to Honduras, we checked out... surrenduring our visas, coastal cruising permit, and precious despacho. But early the next morning, when we turned on the weather forecast, we had an unwelcome surprise. The trough that was lingering in the west Caribbean for the past month had turned smack in our direction, making heavy weather and high seas, directly in our path to Honduras.
We had no choice but to wait for better weather. Throughout that day, the wind clocked steadily, turning us toward that dreaded lee shore. We pitched uncomfortably in the swell rolling in from the Caribbean, and discussed whether or not to make a run for a more protected anchorage -- though there was none within 40 miles. Consulting with the Cuban diving and fishing boats over the VHF radio -- in terribly inept Spanish -- we finally decided to wait it out and, if the shit should really hit the fan, follow them to a more protected spot.
So, we waited there for four days, while the weather slowly blew itself out, and we ate up all the fresh food we had found for the passage to Honduras. It rained torrentially each day. On the first day, we considered it a blessing; we topped off our tanks, showered, and washed all the laundry with fresh water to spare. But when it continued to pour for the next two days, and nothing would or could dry, we were holed up in a damp, rocking cabin, with all our clothes and sheets hanging over our heads, mildewing and stinking.
Because we had already surrendered our Cuban visas, we could not go back on shore. Offshore the seas were still too rough to sail, so we were exiled on Sea Quill -- stuck to our mooring spot, unauthorized to put our feet on terra firma. As a substitute for getting out, we swam over to visit the fishing boat on the other mooring; while treading water, we attempted to talk to the fishermen about the weather.
On the fifth afternoon, suffering seriously from cabin fever, we both swam to shore; if we couldn't go on land and mingle, at least we would put our feet on the sand. We stood in the surf, near a vacationing German family, sorely aware that only they could walk back up the beach when they chose.
Finally, the weather broke. Chris Parker and the U.S. Coast Guard reported wave heights going down. The trough was moving north, and the trades would soon be reestablished. Good enough for us. We slipped our mooring, sheeted out the jib, and sailed from Cuba bright and early with a very spare NE breeze behind us. We were making 2.5 knots.
As we left, the fisherman, our neighbors on the next buoy, were just returning from sea. We waved and held out a small plastic bag with the last of our pesos, Cubans and Convertibles, plus a few bars of soap and some pens. They blessed us with big smiles and best wishes.
We sailed all that day, but seemed to be going nowhere. The wind slowly turned, as predicted, but it was barely blowing. We had a long trip ahead of us, but couldn't seem to get Cuba behind us. Late that afternoon, we crossed a busy shipping lane -- a sign that we were finally clear of Cuban waters. We counted six massive freighters, headed on the same curved trajectory, skirting Cuba en route to or from the Gulf of Mexico. In that same part of the sea, we encountered bunches of floating soda bottles and plastic trash, apparently thrown overboard from the freighters.
We saw two fins in the water that afternoon. Not dolphins, which we are accustomed to seeing. These fins were sharply hooked, large, and black. The fish slowly circled a plastic thing floating on the surface. They did not dip and dive like dolphins. Jen ducked into the cabin for the fish identification book, and we spent the next half hour debating whether they had been swordfish or sharks.
Later we saw a pink thing bobbing in the water. In Santiago de Cuba, Mika had told us how Anya had found a huge fender floating at sea. We needed one of those. And then, our friends Alice and Peter on Yamana had found a brand new dinghy, just floating in the ocean. Cool. Our pink thing seemed far away, but based on our friends' good luck, we were curious and hopeful; we decided to alter course and check it out. We sailed to it, only to discover that it was a pink, plastic shoe.
Progress was slow. The wind had clocked around, as predicted, but it had stopped in the South, right on our nose. We were tacking to make any headway at all, and still, we were barely moving forward. At the same time, we were rolling in the swell left over from the heavy weather. We decided to start the Yanmar. But even with the engine, we couldn't achieve more than 4 knots. When we left Cuba, we estimated 80 hours for the passage. 30 hours later, based on our current speed and distance covered, our ETA was still 72 hours away -- and that was following a week of cabin confinement at Maria la Gorda. Not fun.
We considered our options. We did have options. Plan A: sail to Guanaja, in the Honduran Bay Islands, where we could get our ailing Yamaha outboard serviced, buy some spare parts, and replenish our empty larder. Plan B: sail west for the Belize atolls, where we might not find food, parts, or services, but we could at least hopscotch down the Central American coast into the Rio Dulce. Our major concern about Plan B, other than starving, was that the guidebook warned us that the sea approaches to the atolls are not for novices.
Still, if we turned west, we could sail for Lighthouse Reef, Belize. It was just a little closer than Guanaja, but the southerly wind would be on our beam, working for us, instead of against, like it was to Guanaja. We argued the pros and cons for awhile, until we were just plain arguing. We both had our hearts set on Honduras, but we did the math and realized that the route to Honduras would mean another three nights of sailing (at our current speed). On the other hand, if we turned towards Belize, our sailing speed would immediately increase to 5 or 6 knots, and we could make landfall after two more nights. That settled it.
We turned west. Immediately, our motion became a little easier and our speed picked up. We were more than two nights from the atoll, but we wondered what we would find when we got there: were we experienced enough to handle navigating through that coral entrance?
Although our motion had improved, we were still getting tossed around in a four or five foot swell. At one point, Ulf went below to look for some cookies. When he opened the cabinet, the boat rolled, and our last dozen eggs torpedoed out of the closet and smashed against the opposite sofa. Jen peered into the cabin in time to see a slime pool of yolks and shells slosh across the floor.
In conditions like that, neither one of us was confident about taking on the stove. We have an open galley, which means that there's no way to wedge yourself in front of the stove. There is the option of strapping yourself to the handle bar of the stove, so that you won't be thrown to starboard when the boat shifts, but then, you're also tied to the spot if a pot of boiling something should fly in your face.
But we couldn't keep going on crackers and cookies either. We had eaten the last of the fruit. We had not had coffee for a day. And without a working refrigerator, nor access to ice, we couldn't keep any prepared foods fresh. To add to the complications, our sink wasn't working. The pump broke a month earlier in Cuba, and without it, the sink would not drain because it is situated below the water line. All the hoses were disconnected, and any liquid that ended up in the sink, would take the short route to the cabin floor. For that reason, we had been washing all our dishes in buckets on the deck. Let's say you decide to make a pasta. You put a bucket on the cabin floor, set a colander on top of it, then lean over and drain the pasta over the bucket. Next, you carry the bucket of boiling pasta water up the companionway ladder and dump it over the side of the boat. Now try that while the boat is pitching. Anyway, to make a long story short, hunger and fatigue finally got Jen to face her fear of the stove. On her off-watch, she went below and put on full raingear, including rubber boots, for skin protection. That day we had pasta, yes, with canned beans -- a poor man's pasta fagioli -- and a pot of freshly brewed coffee.
Nothing but sea. The last boats we saw were more than a day behind us, back in the shipping lane. We didn't see another vessel after that, nor fish nor mammal, following those mystery fins. It struck Jen that there was no way to get off Sea Quill other than to keep sailing until we reached land. While it may seem obvious, it was only there, in the middle of that four day passage, that she really got it: we were on a 32 foot sailboat, in the middle of the Caribbean. Our maximum speed is about 6 miles an hour, and we couldn't even achieve that. We were being tossed all over the place, so that everything -- eating, walking, peeing, even just sitting -- was uncomfortable. And we still had more than 170 miles of sea between us and any possible land fall. We were totally alone, with 2000 meters of water beneath us. We were uncomfortable, tired and emotional, and there was absolutely no way to call "time out, no thanks." It was about then that Ulf said, "We could really use some dolphins right now."
The single thing that connected us to others was the SSB radio. Each morning, we tuned in to the Western Carribbean Net, a radio net run by cruisers, for cruisers, in the western caribbean. The purpose of the net is to provide information and assistance, and to keep a look out for one another. The net was a surprising comfort to both of us. It felt good to check in each morning, to speak to other human beings elsewhere (maybe even on land), to tell them our coordinates, and to hear our coordinates read back to us in confirmation, to hear people mention our boat, or wish us well. The cruisers' net also reports weather and helps facilitate communication between boats that may be out of range. Although we were not able to talk to Australia 31, on their way to Florida, the net relayed our messages back and forth.
On our third day out, the wind moved firmly to E/SE, and it was now on our rear quarter, our best point of sail. It had also picked up to a steady 20-25 knots, and we were flying -- but we couldn't fly. We needed to pace our approach to Lighthouse Reef. With it's notorious, west-setting current, we did not want to get anywhere near the barrier reef at night. We needed the sun bright and high above us, so that we would be able to see the corals beneath the water. We took down our mainsail and reefed our jib until it was little more than a hanky; we had the mizzen up for stability, and we were still going between 5.5 and 6 knots through the night.
We altered our course more south to diminish the power of the wind, and to keep ourselves well away until the sun was up. We spent the last night of the passage just working to control our speed -- and adjusting our course to avoid an early, disastrous, landfall. When dawn came, we were closing quickly on our end waypoint, but there was no land to see. That felt weird. We were sailing towards a mere speck on the map, hardly any land at all, just a wisp of sand, surrounded by a ring of jagged coral.
Finally we saw palm trees in the distance: Half Moon Caye. We would approach the Caye through a narrow break in the coral reef. We were both dying to finish the passage, to set the anchor and crawl into bed. But we couldn't rush it. We were about two miles off at 11 a.m., when the sky filled with rain clouds. Our timing was right for a good bow watch, but the sun had to shine. Without strong sunshine, we wouldn't be able to see the safe path through the corals. With rain clouds gathering overhead, we turned Sea Quill around and headed back out to sea. For forty minutes, we sailed away from Half Moon Caye, until we saw a patch of clear sky that we predicted would soon pass over the reef. We turned back, and revved up the motor, so that we could make it to the reef in time for that patch of sunshine.
We passed through the outer breakers, and Sea Quill settled down. We had made it inside the reef, but we still had to find our way to a safe anchorage, and our chart indicated shallow coral heads scattered all over the place. Our depth readings were off soundings one second, then 3 or 4 meters in the next moment. Nerve-racking sailing. But that's what makes Lighthouse Reef world class for diving and snorkeling. We had sailed right up to the reef wall.
The sky clouded over again, and we couldn't see much from the bow watch. There were two big dive boats moored further in, so we called them on the radio and asked for help finding a good anchorage, while avoiding coral heads inbetween. They suggested that we take one of their moorings and told us the GPS points for a narrow, coral-free pass that would lead us safely behind the western edge of the reef, where the moorings were. We thanked them and set off on the final mile of our passage.
Ulf was at the helm, while Jen was on the bow watch. The sun was again shining brightly overhead, and the GPS points proved to be solid. We motored through the reef break, picking our way easily around a few danger spots that were easy to see as long as the sun was shining its bright spotlight through the water. Then, suddenly, we were outside of Lighthouse Reef again, but on the western side. The water was calm and flat, with the long barrier reef protecting it from the Caribbean swell. We picked up an enormous mooring ball meant for a 100 ton ship, instead of a 12 tonner, like Sea Quill. We were firmly hooked on the mooring in a stiff 20 knot breeze, but she still couldn't pull the mooring line tight.
We happened to be at one of Earth's most beautiful, sought-after dive spots. For the next couple of days we traded mooring balls with the two live-aboard dive boats, as they went through their rounds of 4 and 5 dives a day for their clients. Although neither one of us dives (yet), when we snorkeled around Sea Quill, we were blown away by the beauty of the reef wall beneath our keel. Huge schools of mature tropical fish hovered in the shade of our sailboat. Deeper still, where the reef fell away into the depths, we saw incredible varieties of fish, and even some small sharks, passing below in the receding darkness.
The next day, we dinghied into Long Caye to see if we could buy some food. There we found one American couple, who had bought a bit of land two years earlier, and built a house way high up on stilts, where they sat on their porch, and read books, and checked off the birds in their field guide. They had nothing to sell, but they offered us some refreshingly cold water -- with real ice. There was no store on the island. Instead, they told us all about their homesteading experience, of coming to the island and building a house in the heat, amid voracious mosquitoes and salt water alligators. The man showed us how the whole island -- over half of which is only mangroves hanging onto bits of submerged coral -- had been surveyed and divided into hundreds of plots. Everything was for sale -- everything -- even the murky, underwater bits. We saw stakes with plot IDs protruding from flooded land, nothing but a few mangrove shoots sticking down into muddy water, and salt water alligators lurking beneath (we imagined). There wasn't a single vista from any point of land. The whole thing was board flat and tangled in mangroves. But, we suspect that "land" is not the "point" of Lighthouse Reef. And sure enough, as soon as we were back in the sea, snorkeling over a spectacular patch reef and peering into the depths off the coral ledge, we were enchanted.
We snorkeled for hours in that remarkably clear water, even clearer and more luminous than the water in Cuba, if that were possible. Snorkeling to Sea Quill from the shallow, "fish tank" of the patch reef close to the Caye, back to the reef wall beneath our boat, was a remarkable exploration: an entire world of fish, a sea of fish, from the tiniest and brightest creatures, tending their coral patches in light-filled shallows, to the big, bigger, and downright scary fish that hunt in the caverns of the wall that abruptly drops away to ninety feet, and then off-soundings altogether.
The wind blew a constant 20-25 knots at Lighthouse. It never let up. Then at night, it blew even harder. But the water on the western outskirt of the reef was flat and the sun shined bright every day.
We decided to sail for Glover's Reef, another 30 miles south. It was a beautiful day, of course, and those trades were still blowing strong from the east, so we had a nice beam reach all the way down, sailing on lake-calm waters protected from the swell by the barrier reef. That was truly "smooth sailing." Around 3 p.m., we turned the corner of South Caye, and picked our way carefully through another narrow coral pass into Glover's Reef.
We still had not checked in to Belize, so we were wondering when, or if, anyone was going to call us on it. We didn't feel like sailing all the way into Belize City, when we intended to move on to Guatemala very shortly. We flew our yellow quarantine flag the entire time we were on the Cayes, and no one ever asked us for our papers. The laid-back attitude we encountered in Belize regarding our status contrasted starkly with our experience in Cuba, where officials checked us at virtually every anchorage, no matter how remote.
At Glover's Reef we found Isla Marisol Resort, a small, stylishly rustic dive resort, run by a super-friendly staff. Mora, the manager, offered us the use of the office computer to check our email. And Feliciana, the chef (who is just what her name means -- happiness), gave us delicious fresh lemonade and banana bread each time we wandered into her kitchen. We didn't have a reservation; we just showed up one day in our sailboat, dropped our hook in their bay, and came ashore. They didn't mind. They were friendly and generous with us. Still, they couldn't sell us any groceries. Their food source is Dangriga, a mainland town one and a half hours away by speed boat, and they bought just enough for booked guests and staff.
We couldn't buy groceries, but we could buy beer... so, we hung out with Mora and Ashton in the quiet, little bar at the end of the dock, and enjoyed a few cold ones each afternoon.
We didn't want to leave Glover's Reef at all. Finally, when we were down to two bags of spaghetti -- and one was full of weevils... AND we still decided to try to sort the weevils from the spaghetti -- we knew we were under a spell. Each day we snorkeled the patch reefs, with their massive Elk Horn corals and turtles and every kind of reef fish. When Ulf said, "I just saw a shark," and Jen decided to stay in the water, it was clear that we were both feeling pretty relaxed.
Nevertheless, we had to leave. The food was gone. We were illegal. We either had to make ourselves official in Belize and go to the mainland to buy food, or we had to keep moving south to Guatemala. As it was already mid-June, officially "hurricane season," we decided to pull a final overnighter down to Livingston, Guatemala, and the safety of the Rio Dulce.
On June 13, despite Ulf's protestations, Jen used the last can of beer to make beer bread, and a pot of rice and beans. As the sun started to set, we fished the anchor and picked our way slowly out through the reef break. This time, Ulf was on the bow watch and Jen was at the helm. Because of the late hour, Ulf couldn't see through the water, but now we were navigating through reef that we'd snorkeled for days.
We sailed out into the Caribbean, five miles east of the barrier reef, following it all the way down to the Bay of Honduras. The trip was 80 miles, or 15-16 hours. We made good speed in a stiff, easterly tradewind until well after dark, when squalls set in with buckets of rain and a lot more wind.
It has become our habit to take down the main sail entirely before night fall, and to sail under jib and mizzen alone during the night, as it is a balanced sail combination for Sea Quill and a cinch for one person to trim and handle. We were still making a good 5 knots this way, when we saw lights on port (from the sea), coming closer and closer. We couldn't be certain, but it seemed to be a smaller freighter, and close to us -- maybe within a mile or two. It was definitely on a similar course, following the barrier reef down to the Bay of Honduras. With the squall in full force, we had to make sure that they could see us too. We're small, after all. And slow. Our navigation lights were on and our radar reflector was up on the spreaders, but we still wanted to be sure. We radioed them with our coordinates, and a voice came back in Spanish accented English:
"Where are you?" he asked.
Jen went below and flipped on the strobe light and the voice came back again: "Oh, that's you? With the flashing light?"
"Yes, that's us."
"Okay, okay, I know where you are now."