The Rio Return

Our final day of cruising was upon us. It was finally time to leave the outer reefs and make our way back into Guatemala to Leap's home at Tortugal Marina. We were not ready. We had in fact been dreading this day for quite some time. Nothing would have sounded better to us than sailing back out to the outer reefs and returning to a life of island hopping wherever the warm breeze sees fit to carry us. But this would have to wait for another day, and another adventure. It was time to head away from the warm sand beaches and the gentle ocean breezes, and begin heading back home to the next phase of life.

First, though, we needed to check out of Belize. The customs process in Placencia took all day, and this would not work with our schedule. Captain Freia Rouscher's guide book mentioned the customs office in Punta Gorda, near the southern-most point of Belize. It was halfway between Placencia and Livingston, Guatemala, so it looked like our best option. We picked out a chain of islands just to the north of the point to spend our last night out at anchor on our own.

We packed up in the morning, said our goodbyes to Dylan and Jeff at Tranquilo, paid our (miniscule) dockage bill, and headed South toward Stuart Cay and the start of the end of our journey.

40 Nm in 7.5 hours, so still not racing pace 

Please ignore the loop-de-loop

Visibility: zero. Protection: total.

We couldn't have asked for a calmer anchorage for our last night out. The water was a muddy brown as a result of the runoff from the nearby hills, so snorkeling was out of the picture. We sat in the cockpit and had a rum drink to celebrate the new anchorage as the sun went down instead, and reflected on how far we had come in the three months we had been lucky enough to spend on a sailboat together.

Sunrise saw us raising the anchor and setting out on Freia Rauscher's inner passage to Punta Gorda.

We navigated this stretch based entirely on Freia's guide and the Gaia GPS Google Maps live imagery. The visibility of the water was still near zero, so our track deftly avoiding the shoals was entirely the result of foresight to download the satellite imagery days earlier on Tranquilo's wifi. We had a SIM card in my phone for the local 3G, but this was simply not reliable for navigational purposes. There was certainly no signal further than 3 miles away from the nearest city. There was a strange cognitive dissonance to the notion that we had a live GPS signal for our current position, but this was only so helpful as the map images we had already downloaded and preloaded. We all know the feeling of following google maps directions on our phone, only to go down a back road and find that it can't help us any more for lack of a signal. For us, this was a way of life, and the places where we could find fresh weather forecasts and navigation maps began to seem like oases.

The bottom at Punta Gorda was a long shallow shelf of sand, quite unlike the steep rocky islands we had grown used to. We were able to get within spitting distance of the primary municipal dock, which was just as well since we had the dinghy motor stowed away and we would be paddling ashore. The customs and immigration office was right by the water, but of course it's never that easy. We needed to walk down the street several blocks to a small open-air office center to make half a dozen copies of the boat registration, our own paperwork, etc. While we were making the copies, a large orange powerboat that I took for a naval rescue vessel sped past Leap up to the dock.

We meandered back to the immigration office, and found a man there in line ahead of us first thing in the morning. He pulled at least two dozen passports with maroon covers out of his bag, and set them all in a row in the office window. He then turned and saw us, hesitated for a moment, and asked "do you two want to go ahead of me?" We eagerly accepted. At the time, we couldn't imagine why he would have so many passports. On the way out, we found an answer. The customs and immigration officers at Punta Gorda were efficient and professional, and soon we were on our way.

This way.

The way back to Livingston had several exits from Belize's inner reef maze, and we picked the one we thought was most directly on our path. Just on the other side of the gates in the reef, we saw this:

A broadside-on approach is always best, right?

Thanks to the way the shallow sand bottom shelves up to Punta Gorda, three miles off the coast was as close as this ship could approach. The large orange power boat that I mistook for a navy rescue craft was clearly their dinghy. We looked her up after the fact, and it turns out this ship hosts semester-at-sea courses and stays out at sea six months out of the year, crossing the Atlantic twice a season to and from the North Sea. If I could do my undergrad studies over again, I would have found a way on to this program. 

Otto the autopilot took us the rest of the way down to Livingston, and we got there just at the peak of high tide. We set up our approach based on the track from our out-bound journey, and tried to line up the markers. Small black stick buoys mark the best approach for fishing and small commercial craft, and they would have helped us in had they not been hidden by entire colonies of dark ocean birds bobbing on the surface and flying low to the water. Spotting the markers was hopeless until we were on top of them, so the approach was spent following the Navionics track and kicking up thousands of terns that had chosen to rest in the path. The Parents (praise their prompt adherence to schedules) had beaten us into the anchorage by about an hour, and gave us a 'welcome back' call on the radio. We passed over the sand bar with only a couple little nudges, and we were back in Guatemala.

We're back, baby.

This time, we were ready for the Livingston anchorage. We pulled in out of the river current, played out our rode, and backed the anchor down hard. Leap dug in like she was never going to leave, and we hopped into the Gloriamaris dinghy to head ashore. Raul and his nephew were ready to help us check in, and we got started getting our last Central American passport stamp (for a while). We had the cash on hand to pay Raul's (extremely well worth it) fees, but no more, so I went up the street in search of an ATM. Neither of the ATM's on the street were working, so I went into a bank hoping that my bare bones Spanish would get me through. It did not suffice. Thankfully Raul's nephew had been sent on an errand to find me, and arrived just in time to help me fill out the paperwork that I hadn't even realized I needed. I was back in full gringo mode, and more than a little embarrassed.

Raul's nephew had been sent to find me because while I was gone they had completed the paperwork and gotten word from Customs and Immigration that there was a problem. I hopped on the back of the scooter and we zipped down to the office. The officer spoke fluent English, and we got right down to business. I was on the official customs forms for Honduras as the captain, despite the fact that only Bryna and Karen appeared on the official form for permission to use Leap. I explained that when we arrived in Utila, the port official had listed me as the captain (because Central America), that Bryna was my wife, that she had been on board with me the entire time, and that she could be here in 2 minutes to corroborate all of this. That was good enough for the officer, who promptly corrected the paperwork, stamped it, and welcomed us into Guatemala.

I was keen to stay in Livingston for a bit and really explore the official capitol of Garifuna culture, but unfortunately we just didn't have the time. One of these days we'll make it back and really explore the town, but there are one or two other adventures higher on our list for the time being. We got set up for our Beggar's river canyon run, and turned up-river to pass through the winding gates and leave the ocean behind. 

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time we left the tidal delta behind and passed in to the jungle canyon. The bustle of Livingston and the thousands of cares of life on the ocean passed away in the wake, and we were enveloped in curtains of lush jungle leaves where hundreds of unseen monkeys and birds called in the afternoon sun. Each twist in the river brought a new world into being, each contained in their own separate piece in the ribbon. Around this turn, Mayans plied their fishing nets while giving the sunken pots ample time to accumulate the day's catch. Around the next turn, a series of huts arranged around a large open palapa that might have been rebuilt in exactly the same way every 10 years since long before the Europeans set sail to this Eden.

The river canyon did mean the end of our sailing adventure, but it was in many ways the most perfect ending we could have asked for. The hours spent following the sun-dappled and gracefully curving river through the mountains and up to the long lake allowed for a much-needed time of quiet reflection in a place that could have been tailor made for such things. We cruised up our winding road, often in silent thought, sometimes talking about some of the wonderful places we had been and the people we had grown close to, crystallizing these memories in a place where peaceful happiness and profound sadness were inseparable. And when we emerged from the gates and came out onto the lake, the last several months had been left behind a golden haze. Not much time would go by before we began describing our time on the ocean as a dream, something wonderful that almost seemed like it couldn't have happened to us and left us in amazement that such a thing was possible.

The golden afternoon sun which bathed our canyon run also meant that we couldn't reach Tortugal marina before dark, since we still had several hours of motoring upstream ahead of us. We had heard about the Texan Bay anchorage on our way out as a prominent stop for those headed into and out of Livingston, and we decided that would be a great place to spend the night. We turned off the main path down the lake and worked our way into the narrow yet marvelously deep entrance. There were plenty of neighbors in the anchorage, including a number of powerboats, but we were able to figure out an anchoring spot and pay out a good amount of rode like seasoned pros.

There was a very pleasant couple on one side of us, and we were glad to have them for neighbors. The boat on the other side, however, was unlike anything we had seen on the rest of the journey. The boat looked like she had not had a bath in 5 years. There were plants growing out of seams in the deck, and more behind the fogged over portholes. This boat was literally decomposing before our eyes. We never saw the owner, and in the back of my mind I was reminded of stories of people who die in New York City apartments and aren't found for years. For the condition of this boat, that very well could have been the fate of her owner. She clearly had not moved in a long time, and it was difficult to picture her moving anywhere, or how the engine could possibly be working with everything else in the condition it was. This is all to say, we cannot envision the person who would buy a boat to retire on, and then allow it to degrade to that state. If that boat was your home and your life, how could you possibly take so little pride in it? I will confess that I often do not exhibit the fanatical obsession with order and cleanliness that many cruisers show, and I don't always possess the requisite horror of drips below decks or street grit in the cockpit. But I can honestly say that I would never let a boat I owned and lived on get anywhere our neighbor's level of neglect.

In any event, The Parents (praise their patience and poise) waited for us to get settled at anchor and chose a spot of their own. They swung the dinghy down and headed over for sundowners and to celebrate the last new anchorage we would make in Leap.

A dugout canoe with a Mayan family aboard came alongside us selling various trinkets and handicrafts. They had a good racket going, as the mother stayed silent in the back of the canoe while the 7-8 year old boy stood up front with the merchandise and did all the bargaining. We conducted the whole transaction in Spanish, and I must say the kid drove a pretty hard bargain. We settled on a hand-carved spoon, and to this day we use it to clean and stir our french press for morning coffee. It's always good for a smile in the morning, or maybe that's just the much-needed coffee.

We woke up early the next morning, weighed anchor, and headed up river for the final leg of our journey. We passed the usual array of local fishing boats, launchas, and other cruisers lazily running a river journey of their own. The familiar array of lodges and hotels built of rough logs and palm leaves drifted by. We passed the bay entrance to the West Marine store where so many dinghy trips had brought us in search of parts and lines. The Backpackers restaurant where we spent a lovely New Years Eve passed by, and the bridge shortly after that.

 

The docks and restaurant of Tikal came into view around the bend, and the end of the journey was in sight. Bryna pulled up and backed Leap into her usual slip like a pro. The neighbors caught lines and helped guide us in, and Miguel was on the dock to welcome us back. It seemed like a lifetime ago since we had left.  

 

A Steger Sojourn

Joyce and Claire had only been waiting for us for around 8 hours. As it turns out, they had arrived in Placencia only minutes after we had left with our sailing day guests. They took time to move in to their rental condo and get settled, waiting for us to show up. After only several hours of waiting for us to show, they went down to the main pier on the idea that it was the closest location to where we were theoretically supposed to be on Leap. Minutes later, I miraculously appeared with a boat full of PA students from Madison and the mystery was solved.

And then we had a Claire's birthday/1st wedding anniversary dinner

Joyce and Claire had found a very nice rental just off the pedestrian path in the heart of town. The location was fantastic, just down from the bar where we met our new PA friends, and just up from the best breakfast and coffee shop in town. They were set back from the beach, so there was some separation from the Sargasso Smell. That's right: the sargasso weed followed us over from Honduras. The neighbors told the tale of the brown mats rolling in merely days before we arrived. The resorts on Placencia beach took a step to combat the weed that we hadn't seen before. On Roatan, they raked up the weed and trucked it to the island interior. On Placencia, they buried it. Each resort hired a crew of workers to dig a large hole in the beach and rake all the rotting weed in for a live burial. I was mildly concerned that this would create a rotting-cesspool-of-quicksand effect. This neurosis was quickly resolved with a walk on the beach.

Our favorite amenity of the rental condo, however, was the pool. We thought we had grown completely accustomed to swimming in the ocean, and become hardened salts. A clean pool in the afternoon sun proved us wrong on the first day. We spent most of our afternoons for the rest of the week going to coffee shops in the morning, exploring the town, and relaxing in the pool in the afternoon. Thanks to the Lifeproof case on the iPad, we played many a game of Settlers of Catan while lounging in the pool. We were playing tourist to the best of our ability after two solid months of self-reliance, and it was glorious.

We knew from the start that we would not feel comfortable leaving Leap at anchor unattended for hours while we went for walks and dips in the pool. It was important that we spend as much time as possible with them while they were in Belize, so we looked at our options for dockage. The main town pier was solid concrete with some small wood rub rails. It didn't look like the best option in case of wind or waves, and we noticed it was not a popular choice among the cruising set. This could also have been because the main pier was a public amenity, with no secure access or dedicated security of any kind. Privacy and security were of paramount importance in Honduras, and although we knew Belize was more stable with marginally lower crime rates, leaving Leap in a public place was simply not an option.

We researched marinas in the area, and we're not impressed with the options. We would have to take Leap into the lagoon behind the peninsula to reach the most promising option, but we ultimately decided against this. For one, the marina seemed designed primarily for power-boaters, as though they were trying to appeal to the jet-set resort crowd. For another, we had been through that lagoon in the public shuttle boat on the way to check in, and while a high-powered longboat was right at home among the mangroves, a wide and heavy sailboat going through at 2 knots was likely to get into trouble.

We found out that plans were in place for a super-marina to be built just off the north end of Placencia town, but this didn't do us any good at the time. The plans for this marina were ambitious, and far beyond the scale of any building project we had seen in Belize. For one, this marina was going to have room for yachts up to 200 feet long. Clearly, the goal was to attract the 1% crowd, though it was honestly difficult to understand what else the 1-percenters would see in Placencia. It was certainly a very nice place, and I would never try to discourage anyone who wanted to go there, but it was also not exactly set up to compete with Monaco in terms of lifestyle. We also soon became aware of intense public distaste for the project. In their minds, enormous private yachts and small cruise ships will not help the reefs, and will not actually bring much additional prosperity to average workers. The prevailing public attitude was that the massive sum of money required to build a cruise ship dock and a super-marina would be much better spent improving the national infrastructure and education systems, and for what it's worth, I entirely agree with the locals on all counts. I have been to dozens of Caribbean islands from one side to the other, and I can say with some authority that the only jobs cruise ships and yachts create are bar servers and trinket sales. The locals really do not see any of those piles of money collected by officials, and don't derive anywhere near the benefits they would if the same amount of money were spent on real local economic infrastructure.

We finally settled on Tranquilo as our best choice for docking. There were daily docks in front of the bar/restaurant, and long permanent docks extending into the island down the little canal. The spot was not especially popular with the cruisers, but for the life of us we couldn't understand why. We struck up a conversation with Jeff the manager, and after getting to know us a bit he offered us dockage for the week at $5 per day. Total. There were marinas in Roatan charging that much per foot! We quickly accepted, thanked him profusely, and pulled Leap into the canal. We set her up with bumpers and spring lines as we had learned on Bounder, and left knowing that she was as snug as we could possibly make her. Leap was secure, and we could enjoy our time on shore with Joyce and Claire with a clear conscience.

Not that we left Leap alone all week. We convinced Claire to come out for a day sail to some of the inner islands after outfitting her with a life jacket and explaining the emergency procedures. The weather all week was 76 degrees and 8 knots out of the South, so we would have been crazy not to head out for some day sail fun!

Getting Leap off the dock and out of the canal was another story all together. The canal was so narrow that there was only enough room to sneak another boat past Leap when she was secured at the dock. With her generous turning circle, the canal was definitely a one-way street. And with her vague-to-nonexistent reverse steering, a 17-point turn wasn't going to happen. We didn't like the idea of trying to take her all the way through the canal and out the other entrance, since we hadn't been that way and we didn't know the depth. We came to the conclusion that what we really needed was bow thrusters, so we found a way to simulate them. Bryna would stay at the wheel and hold the stern line, while I got in the dinghy and took the bow line. I would cast off the bow and push Leap's nose around while Bryna kept her in forward idle. This way we could spin her around 180 degrees in half her own length! Bryna would drive her out into the mooring field while I followed behind in the dinghy. When we had room to work, I would catch up and secure the dinghy for a tow and hop right on board without slowing down, and we were on our way!

Seen here

Claire had enjoyed her first day sail, but one was enough for her. We took Joyce out for a second trip, and this time decided we would find an out-island to anchor and do a bit of snorkeling. Joyce was really getting the hang of steering, and had her boat-handling pretty well down. If we had more time, we would have started sail trim lessons! We picked out a promising island a couple hours outside of Placencia, and worked our way into a little bay on Freia Rouscher's guide tracks. The island was a small temporary fishing habitation with a gorgeous half-moon bay and a sandy beach with locals going about their business. We found that the shallow sand bottom we had expected was really more of a deep bowl, so we had to hunt around for an anchoring spot. The first try was a no-go, as the anchor clearly had tumbled down the slope of the bowl and was sitting on the bottom. We tried again, pulling more to one side of the bay. We thought we might have a set on the second try, but soon realized we were slowly inching away. I went up to the bow to retrieve the anchor for another go. Bryna out Leap in forward to reset, and got nothing. She tried shifting back into neutral and then into forward again. Still nothing. We knew right away that the transmission plate had spit its bolts out again. This time, though, were 100 feet away from a reef and slowly drifting into it with no anchor set. I let out another 30 feet of chain in the hopes that the pile on the bottom would help slow the drifting. Then I ran back to the cockpit, jumped into the cabin and pulled the stairs and engine cover off faster than I ever would have thought I could. Two bolts were still hanging in the transmission plate by their last thread, and thank goodness, because if I would have had to fish in the engine compartment by hand for a bolt we may not have had a hope. I lined up the plates, got both bolts in finger tight (I have pliers for fingers), threw open the tool compartment and found the wrench. As I was tightening the first bolt, Bryna shouted down stairs "I JUST NEED ONE! GIVE ME ONE BOLT!" and half a second later I shouted back "YOU HAVE IT! GO!" By now we were only 30 feet from the reef. Bryna out Leap in forward and eased the throttle on, and we moved safely away from the reef. Once we were clear, Bryna out it back in neutral and I went down to tighten the second bolt. We went as far to the other side of the bay as we dared and dropped the anchor in very shallow sand right off the bow. This time, it held. I jumped in to verify the anchor set, and were dug in tight. 

I found the other two bolts down in the engine compartment, and we tightened them in so we were back to a 4-bolt connection. We needed a good swim after all this excitement, but Joyce would be staying on board. We showed her how to start the engine, and explained the concept of finding two fixed points on land to check whether she was drifting. We explained that in case she was drifting while we were gone, all she had to do was start the engine and put the boat in forward idle. She could stay in one place just by shifting back and forth in idle, and we would be back before long. Thankfully there was no need, but I think she appreciated the safety procedure talk all the same.

Bryna and I snorkeled for a few hours around the corner of the bay and back. The soft coral population was thriving and various, probably some of the best we had seen during the entire trip. The fish population was another story. We had rarely seen so few fish on an otherwise thriving reef. This may be the counter-point to Belize's extensive park system. All the locals seemed to intimately understand the value of the marine national parks for tourism and ecology purposes, and they appreciate the value these aspects bring to their economy. On the other hand, with so much marine territory reserved for parks, there is even less available for subsistence fishing. Tourists on the resort islands still demand their snapper fillets and conch fritters, and those are certainly not going to come out of the park just off the beach. Combine this with the catastrophic loss of reefs across the entire Caribbean, and it's difficult to envision a bright future for Belize in the decades to come without significant advances in local fish farming technology and affordability. If I were ready to retire to the Caribbean, I would set my sights on designing and building efficient small-scale fish farms from recycled materials. Any hydronic engineers out there want to move to the western Caribbean and pursue a semi-philanthropic career in food systems management and zero-budget urban design with us?

In any event, we arrived back at the boat safely, and cruised straight back to Placencia without incident. We found Claire thoroughly relaxed after a full day of beach walking, reading, and napping, and she was extremely happy that she had not been on board for all the excitement in the anchorage. We snugged Leap back into her dock at Tranquilo and went in to have a beer with Jeff and our favorite bartender Dillon. If you ever find yourself in Placencia in need of a beer, get yourself straight to Tranquilo and Barefoot Beach Bar. Anywhere else, you'll waste your time at best or end up being yelled at by racist old expats who fled the Obama presidency at worst.

In all, the dock at Tranquilo was the best place we could possibly have left Leap for hours at a time. It was there, however, that we had our first true unwanted visitor. We came back from Placencia town in the late morning, eager to head out for a couple hours of day sailing. I jumped on board and started to open the companionway hatch, when Bryna started yelling "BEHIND YOU! LOOK BEHIND YOU!" I jumped about three feet in the air, and turned around to see this:

Pictured: not rubber.

Not being well versed in snake lore, I jumped straight off the boat. Then we realized I had left the companionway hatch wide open in my haste to get away from the serpent. We had seen a dead Fer de Lance snake in Guatemala that had been hiding out below decks in someone else's boat, so we knew that we weren't dealing with that highly venomous and aggressive species. None the less, we knew that we definitely did not want a snake below decks if we could help it. I climbed slowly back on board, retrieved the companionway boards, and set them back in place. The snake wasn't getting below that way at the very least.

Around this time, Dylan had heard the commotion and came down the walkway to see what was going on. We (completely calmly) pointed out the snake and asked if it was poisonous. Dylan didn't say a word, but steadily crept on board and worked his way around behind the snake. He reached out to grab the snake by the back of the head, but realized at the last second that it was wrapped up around the helm and he would have a wrestling match on his hands.  Instead, we took a couple PVC pipes off the foredeck and used them to whack the deck and the helm near the snake's tail. This scared it enough to slither out of the cockpit and out onto the dock.

Dylan chased it out into the trees, and so departed our first and only unwelcome intruder. We researched local snakes in Tranquilo that night, and we discovered that we had seen a Parrot snake. These arboreal serpents aren't poisonous, as we feared, and don't usually feed on parrots. What they do subsist on is primarily tree frogs. As far as we can tell, this one was hanging out in the trees on the island minding his own business. It was then that he spied an absolutely enormous frog perched on Leap's bow. He got himself into a strong position in the cockpit and planned to wait until the Leap decal walked back into the shade! We almost feel sorry for him in retrospect, for depriving him of his culinary jackpot.

We spent the next few days partaking in the culinary delights of Placencia, of which we can particularly recommend the Secret Garden restaurant.

Soon, however, it was time for Joyce and Claire to head back to Wisconsin, and time for us to pack up to head back to Guatemala. Our time with Leap was nearing its end, and we had a returning schedule to keep.

Next Time: Back the way we came

New Friends From the Home Lands

We were officially checked into Belize and ready to explore our new base of operations for the next couple weeks. Placencia had a very different feel from the Honduras we had grown used to over the past two months. The anchorage just off the town dock had at least three times the amount of boats we had seen in French Harbor, and we were going to have to get used to having neighbors. Some of our new neighbors were bare-boat charter catamarans, which we were definitely not used to. They were mostly on the outside of the anchorage and seemed to be on the move to the outer reefs, so we decided to stay well inside and out of their way. The holding ground was strong, so we felt secure leaving Leap for a few hours and heading into town.

Site of a previous posting

We found a nice treehouse-style coffee shop and spotted a few very promising restaurants. Placencia was definitely shaping up to be more of a typical Caribbean tourist destination than Honduras. The coffee was great, but we were actually experiencing a little culture shock from all the Americanization. It was actually fairly strange that everyone we interacted with daily was completely fluent in English. We had grown so used to getting along with a barely-adequate but ever-increasing supply of nautical Spanish that it was vaguely unsettling to suddenly have no use for it. We were sure we would get used to it. In the mean time, it was time to hit the town for a stroll.

Placencia town was actually very pretty, with many small restaurants opening onto a walking path through the middle of the tourist district, but naturally I didn't take any pictures of that. We spotted a few bars right on the beach and picked one to come back for a sun-downer.

Not this one.

The most popular bar among all the cruisers was Yoli's. It was a beautiful tiki house with a huge dinghy dock right in front, a whole host of regulars, and a reputation for throwing great parties. We found that we didn't care for a number of the regular clientele. The place had a "Puerto Ricans use back door" sign pointing off the dock, and it didn't seem to be a joke. We did not go back.

We found the Barefoot Beach Bar instead. It was colorful and lots of fun, with a lower bar area right in the beach. We sidled up and had some great burgers for lunch. I won a dirty joke contest and gave away my key-lime-pie-shot prize. We hung out on the beach for most of the afternoon and had ourselves a real Caribbean vacation day.

We were still hanging around the Barefoot Beach Bar when night fell and the place filled up fast. We had returned to the lower bar, and people were continually going to the little open space next to us for drinks. I was talking with my hands like I usually do and ended up elbowing a young woman pretty hard on the shoulder. I apologized profusely and she was very nice and shrugged it off, and soon we got to chatting with her and the guy standing with her. Her name was Liz and his was Jimmy, and we soon discovered they were Badgers! They were part of a big group of Physician Assistant students who had gotten placed in Belize on a rotation for rural medicine. They were incredibly friendly and we got along so well that we invited them out for a little day sail on Leap the next day.

Pictured: The next day.

There were six PA school Badgers waiting for us at the dock with water-spouts about a mile away to the South. I ran to the dock and carted them all out to the boat and we waited for the system to pass. The weather cleared up soon after and we decided to head for the closest group of islands in the inner reef. Everyone was incredibly nice, and wanted to know all about our cruising lifestyle. We talked a lot about sailing, taught them a few things, and recommended they all head down to the Hoofers to further their sailing education once they returned to Madison. We had a blast recounting all our adventures, and everyone was having a great time doing some driving and learning how to trim a large-bellied roller-furler jib. We made it to the islands in 1.5 hours and set the anchor for a swim.

We tried a few halyard swings and splashed around for a while before it was time to head back. The breeze was perfect for a comfortable beam reach straight back to Placencia, and the weather could have been made for an ideal sailing day. We told Andrew, Brian, Liz, Jimmy, Laura, and Kay how much we enjoyed hosting and taking them out for the day, and they thanked us profusely for the completely unexpected bonus sailing day. They were heading up into the mountains the next day for another shift at practicing rural medicine, so we promised to keep in touch and meet up again when we were all back in Madison. I dropped everyone off at the town dock, and there were Joyce and Claire waiting for us!

Next Time: The great coconut-shrimp comparison quest

Belize It, Baby

It was time to meet Joyce and Claire in Belize!

After careful deliberation, we decided that it was impossible to sail all the way from Roatan to Belize in a single day. We had about 15 hours ahead of us at Leap's hull speed, so we would need to play our cards just right in order to arrive at Glover's reef in plenty of daylight. Our choice soon became clear: we would leave West End in the late afternoon and sail through the night to arrive in Belize the next morning.

This time, we would truly be on our own. The Parents would not be joining us for this leg of the adventure, since the Gloriamaris work schedule simply would not allow it. We had made good progress on the flooring project in Guanaja, but it was now time for Captain Dad to really dedicate some quality work time to get the project in presentable condition. Our brother [in law] Bryce was also soon to arrive, and The Parents were committed to retrieving him and showing him some of the island that had been their home for the better part of a year.  We were faced with the prospect of an overnight ocean crossing without the assurance of a Gloriamaris rescue. Daunting stuff for a couple of first-timers.

At this stage in our adventure, however, we were reasonably confident in our ability to sail to the nearest harbor and generally keep ourselves safe in the event of an engine emergency. We had also realized that Leap only acts up when Captain Dad is within radio distance, as though she were a clingy child in need of attention and chose engine failure as a way to get it. We were reasonably confident that once we had Leap on our own away from her parents she would perform just fine for us. We therefore set out late in the afternoon from West End, shot through the gap, and headed out to sea.

With a bit of fresh guacamole on the way

Part 1: 60.7 nautical miles, 13 hours

Part 2: 20.1 nautical miles, 5 hours

We logged a grand total of 81 nautical miles in 18 hours, after finding we actually needed to slow down! We had let the jib all the way out once we were in the open sea, and we were cruising along at a solid 6 knots. We were proud of the speed Leap was showing us, but it would have gotten us there at 3:00 in the morning. That's no time of day to be picking your way through an unknown reef. We furled half of the jib back in, set the trim, and got ourselves down to 3.5 knots in the hope of arriving in the daylight.

We settled in to a 2-hour shift schedule, and made sure to set timers to run the engine periodically. We could easily have made the whole trip under no more than sail power, but with the autohelm, the lights, and the navigation equipment all running we were draining the batteries fast. We ran the engine every few hours, and otherwise enjoyed a true trade wind wafting us west, steady and reliable. Fortunately, we had made sure to stock up on the greatest night crossing food known to man: Honduran chili-chicken spicy instant noodles.

Around 2:00 in the morning, we sighted a couple of bright lights far out on the horizon. We knew that we were crossing the shipping route to Puerto Barrios, so we set alarms and made sure to keep a close watch on what we assumed were a pair of cargo ships coming over the horizon toward us. In fact, they turned out to be the bow and stern lights of a massive freighter steaming South to the Honduran coast. We didn't realize this until we could make out the actual silhouette of the ship crossing our path. This was a little close for comfort, as she was probably within a nautical mile or two, and at the speeds those cargo ships move, that does not leave much time to react. Fortunately she did not seem overly concerned with us, and carried on well ahead. The Gloriamaris is equipped with AIS, and we realized just how much that system can come in handy on night passages.

We passed the rest of the night without incident or any further ship crossings, and raised Glover's Reef around 8:30 in the morning.

Nicely isolated

We had armed ourselves with Captain Freia Rauscher's guidebook on the Belize outer reefs, and chose our entry spot on the south end. There was a dive boat out tooling around from the local resort, and I think we gave them a scare during our entry. There was a tiny cut right next to the island, but it was so narrow we weren't confident in our ability to reverse or turn Leap around if we ran out of depth.

We decided to take a large fish-hook course through the more generous opening and weave past the small coral heads to end up right behind the island.

Apparently we hooked a little wide for the liking of the dive boat, however, as they came racing over trying to get our attention. They only turned back when we started our quick turn to the east inside the reef. At least they were looking out for us!

We cruised slowly into the sheltered bay behind the island, and looked for a good anchoring spot. There was already a large catamaran anchored in the prime spot, so we tried to keep a respectful distance. Unfortunately, the rest of the bay was completely covered in turtle grass. We tried twice in different spots, and could not get an anchor to stick. This was our first real anchoring failure since Livingston, but without the swirling currents and general incompetence. At this point in our adventure, we were feeling much more composed and capable when presented with an anchoring setback.

During the second attempt, a small powerboat came racing down from the north and settled in to watch us attempt to anchor. They followed us as we moved in to the sand near the catamaran, and kept their distance as we managed to set our anchor securely, albeit a little closer to the catamaran than we would have preferred. As we were setting the safety lines and it was clear that we were securely hooked, the boat pulled alongside. They were park rangers, there to collect the $10 US per day for our visit to the outer reef. We explained that we weren't actually checked in to Belize yet, and were still flying our yellow quarantine flag, but they were only there for the park fees and were quite content to go on their way once they had collected. We were impressed by their polite but extremely prompt response to our arrival.

Once we were secured and comfortable, we kept the tradition and had a rum drink to christen the new safe anchorage. Yes, this rum drink is mandatory, even if it's 10:00 in the morning. We then immediately plunged into the deep sleep of the mariner who has been staring into the black depths searching for the slightest point of light. We awoke several hours later and discussed our options. Our next destination was Placencia, but that was still 6 hours away through a torturous maze in the inner reefs. If we were to attempt that passage on this day, we would have to leave immediately. That prospect did not sound the slightest bit appealing, so we decided to sit tight and have a restful day snorkeling and get a full night's sleep for the inner reefs.

Some how, some way, we would survive here for a day.

Glover's Reef featured a number of surprisingly shallow coral heads spread equidistantly from each other through the whole rise. The dinghy was securely fastened to the foredeck and the engine was mounted tight to the stern rail, so rather than begin the hour-long process of prepping the dinghy, we decided to simply snorkel straight from Leap. We were somewhat disappointed by the small area we were able to see, as the coral did not seem healthy or plentiful, and the fish were all tiny and skittish. Apparently we were not in the ideal location to experience Belize's legendary outer reef preserves. Still, we had an enjoyable time swimming and enjoying the warm water. We were not allowed to go in to the resort, since we couldn't set foot on shore due to not being checked in to Belize. Not that anyone would know, but we figure it's best to obey the letter of the law when it comes to international borders.

The next morning saw us up bright and early, eager with the prospect of winding our way through the famous Belizian inner reefs. We departed Glover's the same way we came in, and were on our way.

44 nautical miles in 8 hours

Entering South Water Cut was an unusual experience. The walls of the reef apparently had a funneling effect on the ocean rollers. Glover's reef covered us from the east, so the long ocean rollers came in from both the northeast and the southeast. They converged right outside the cut, and so we had the profoundly bizarre experience of surfing horse-shoe shaped waves straight through a shallow reef cut. Bryna was at the wheel, and timed it perfectly so that we passed over the cut on the crest of a double roller. Once inside the cut, the large waves vanished. We were on glassy turquoise water that was a fairly uniform 15 feet deep. If we weren't on a schedule to meet Joyce and Claire, we could have stayed out here for days.

It was fairly amazing how quickly we adapted to the new readings on the depth gauge. Depths of 30 feet and rising were once terrifying in the early days of Roatan and Utila. Now, on the inner reefs of Belize, we grew vary comfortable with consistent readings of 8-12. Bryna drove the entire way through the inner reefs, while I stayed put on the bow sighting coral heads and calling paths through the reef. We emerged after finding a (fairly) straight path through the gorgeous maze and found ourselves in the inner waterway running along the Belize coastline. We had a steady breeze right on our beam, so we let out the jib and put Otto the Autohelm back on the job. The inner waterway bottom was astonishingly steady, never varying outside of 43-45 feet. We settled in for a 3-hour cruise to the finish, and got ourselves prepared to check in to Belize.

Placencia harbor was a bit different than we were used to after two months in Honduras. Simply put, we were not used to tourists. We counted four charter catamarans as we pulled in to the anchorage, and there was scarcely a sheltered place to put Leap. We eventually found a decent spot in the middle of the crowd, and set the anchor. The water in the bay was pea-soup opaque, so we simply backed down hard and set the GPS to make sure we weren't moving.

We had come to Placencia without actually knowing the best location to check in, since we didn't necessarily trust the guidebooks to be fully up to date. We got the dinghy down and found a nearby boat with several people having a cocktail hour, so we headed over to find some information. The owner was a very nice older man from Minnesota who informed us that we would need to take a water taxi to the mainland and a regular taxi from there to a group of government buildings in the middle of nowhere to check in, and no, there was no way we would get that done at 3:30 in the afternoon. He advised us to sit tight until the next morning, and told us that we could easily go ashore and no one would know or care. We compromised and headed to a nearby bar that sat on stilts over the water off a nearby island. Our logic was that we were not actually ashore in the main town, so it was skirting a grey area.

A different scene, but not a bad one in its own way

The next morning, we made our way through town to the water taxi dock, and got on board with the locals for the morning commute. The Belize government staff was friendly and professional, though the check-in prices were three times what we had been used to paying in Honduras. Cruising up and down Belize for weeks would be an expensive proposition, at least by our standards. None the less, we were checked in, and we went into Placencia town for a rum drink on the beach.

There was one particular aspect of the Placencia anchorage for which we were not entirely prepared. I would estimate that 40 percent of the rented catamarans were chartered by nudists. We had just come from 2 months in Honduran waters, where a Seventh Day Adventist sense of public decorum was the law of the land. Open public nudism was not something we had experienced in our time in Honduras, and was not something we intrinsically connected with the cruising lifestyle. Now, naturism is something we typically embrace. Weather permitting, we never wore our suits whenever we were out of sight from land. That's one of the reasons why there are very few photos of us on passages or secluded reefs. The other reason being that we hadn't showered for a solid week on most of these occasions. Plus, we've never been much for selfies. We've always understood that the cruising lifestyle often involves discreetly bathing off the back of your boat, or going skinny dipping on a particularly pretty night. We certainly did both of these on many occasions and had neighbors in many an anchorage who did the same. There is, however, something about an overweight naked middle aged man standing on the deck at 10:00 in the morning and bending over to raise the anchor that seemed a bit ostentatious and not strictly necessary. Then again, they were on vacation and looked like they were enjoying themselves, so who are we to insist on our sense of discretion? This would simply be a quirk of the Placencia anchorage and a new aspect of the life to which we would adjust.

Next time: Buddies at the beach bar