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