11 March 1996 Long Cay, Lighthouse Reef, Belize
As forecast, the wind picked up to 25 knots last night. I had left my windsurfer tied to the dinghy by a bit of 4mm line. At midnight, I just HAD to get up, in the pitch black, climb into the dinghy and tie a nice thick rope onto the windsurfer. I then passed out for the rest of the night.
The forecast is for the wind to start dropping tomorrow and come more to the north east. First thing in the morning it was NW20-25, with blue skies. We did school work in the morning. In the afternoon, Glenys and I went for a dive – yet another vertical wall dive. I speared two Grouper for dinner. “Khaya” came out snorkelling with us and got quite a few fish too. We invited them over for an evening beer or 3.
12 March 1996 Long Cay, Lighthouse Reef, Belize
A beautiful day today. I spent an hour repairing Brett’s spear and then Brett and I went hunting. He shot a 5lb Hog fish (took two attempts) and I speared a couple of fish and a 3lb lobster. We had a quiet afternoon and then went to “Khaya” to celebrate Judy’s birthday. Very peaceful evening, beautiful water colours and a fantastic sunset, but still no sign of Honey the Dolphin.
13 March 1996 Long Cay to The Blue Hole, Belize
Not a breath of wind and a cloudless sky. We decided to go with “Khaya” through the centre of Lighthouse Reef to the famous Blue Hole. We had to weave our way between isolated reefs while skirting the inside of the east edge of the reef. It was very interesting motoring along in depths of 3-5 metres over sand, grass and reef. We spotted lots of stingrays, barracuda and 3 nurse sharks. The fish were very easy to spot from the mizzen spreaders, where I spent most of the 3 hours.
As the morning went on, the horizon became mistier and by the time we arrived at the Blue Hole, it was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the sky began. In fact, the Blue Hole was a bit of a disappointment because it wasn’t as well defined as we expected. We motored through one gap in the circular reef which went from 4 metres depth to 100 metres! We then went through the other gap and anchored to the east of the Blue Hole.
After lunch (fish sandwiches of course), Glenys and I went for a dive in the Blue Hole – cold, dark, poor visibility and devoid of life. The Blue Hole was formed when a subterranean cavern collapsed. The walls are totally vertical from 10 metres to 40 metres, at which point we could see the roof of the cavern complete with 10 ft stalactites. These stalactites were formed over 12,000 years ago when the sea level was 50 metres less than it is today. Glenys was very apprehensive (wide staring eyes, rapid breathing and high pulse), so further exploration was vetoed! We swam along the edge for 5 minutes and then came back up. Short dive, load of crap, but “been there, done that!” I filled 4 tanks. We were invited to “Khaya” for dinner and had a very good time, getting back to Glencora at eleven pm.
14 March 1996 The Blue Hole to Long Cay, Belize
Glenys was feeling very rough! We decided to motor back south, because clouds magically appeared when we were ready to go. The Blue Hole was like Piccadilly Circus with about 4 dive boats coming and going. We came out a lot faster than we went in – we knew there was a way for us. “Khaya” followed us out and then sailed off over the horizon. We anchored on the west side of the reef. I then went for a dive while Glenys tried to recover. The boys went snorkelling with Brett’s spear gun, but came back as soon as they saw a barracuda. We then went back to the anchorage at Long Cay.
After lunch (fish again), Glenys and I went for a dive. We caught a small lobster and then I speared a large (6lb) Hog fish. It wasn’t a very good shot and I had a bit of a fight. I finally got hold of the fish and turned to Glenys. She shook her head and refused to put the fish into the bag that she was carrying. Puzzled, I signed “why?” With her hand she then made a sign of a snapping mouth and stretched her arms wide.
At first I thought she was worried about a barracuda, and tried to give her the fish. More wild gestures followed and adamant refusal to take the fish. Slowly, I realised that she had seen a SHARK!! I confirmed this by miming a shark’s fin on my back with my hand. Glenys nodded vigorously and mimed a snapping mouth with her hand. Amazed, I took my regulator out and shouted “SHARK?” More vigorous nodding – I dropped the fish, and looked around – nothing. I mimed “no more spear fishing”. Vigorous nodding of head!
We carried on the dive just looking for lobster. Apparently while I was fighting the Hog fish, a 7ft reef shark had appeared from the depths and had passed about 5ft behind me. It then swam between Glenys and me and off into the depths again. I think that we were lucky it didn’t attack the injured Hog fish. It certainly gave Glenys a scare! We saw another one a bit later in the dive, but it just ignored us.
When we arrived back at Glencora, we had a visit from Honey the Dolphin. She is a full grown bottlenose dolphin, about 10ft long. She swam close to our dinghy for a while then swam about 30 metres away and stayed there. Brett, Craig and I swam over to her, but she chased us off by butting me in the chest with her snout. It was really worrying because there was nothing I could do to stop her. I tried to put my hands out, but she just ducked past them and hit me in the chest. (Quite hard as well.) I told the boys to swim back while I lagged behind, keeping myself between them and the “crazy” dolphin.
We returned to Glencora and got out of the water. After a few minutes, Honey came back and was very docile. She seemed to like hovering under the dinghy and occasionally scratching her belly on the bottom of the dinghy. We got back into the water and swam with her for about 15 minutes. She tolerated us taking pictures and occasionally let us touch her skin, which felt like a tuna’s skin but seemed to move when you touched it.
It’s strange how she reacted earlier. We think that she was trying to get me and the boys to go back to the safety of our boat, because she was very gentle with us when we swam with her next to the boat. Fantastic experience – I’m so glad we stayed today.
15 March 1996 Lighthouse Reef to Isla Mujeres, Mexico (Day 1)
We got up early and prepared the boat for sea. There was a 15 knot wind from the East, so it looked like we would have a good sail. I couldn’t get the GPS to work again – it kept resetting itself. We had a great sail along the west edge of Lighthouse Reef. ENE 20 and no seas. We kept 100 metres off the edge of the reef so that we could see the beautiful colours. At midday, we cleared the reef and steered 030° into 6-8 ft seas – yuk! Actually, it wasn’t too bad once we settled down - we were sailing about 50° to the wind and the seas were fairly benign.
We hove-to for an hour at five o’clock, so that Glenys could make one of her fabulous 3-tin, 1-pot stews. Glenys decided that my normal watches of 11-2 and 5-8 were better than her 8-11 and 2-5 because she had two dark watches whereas I only had 1½! We decided to swap to me doing 7-10 and 1-4 and she did 10-1 and 4-7. I finally got the GPS working by forcing it to do a sky search using AUX.
16 March 1996 Lighthouse Reef to Isla Mujeres, Mexico (Day 2)
We had a fairly pleasant night. The wind was steady and we roared along. I decided that I liked our new watches. The 7-10 wasn’t too arduous and I only got woken up once during the night instead of twice. I felt much more rested in the morning. Glenys on the other hand was more tired, but she had enjoyed watching the sun rise. We decided to keep the same watches tonight.
We had a beautiful sail during the day. Blue skies and a 15-20 knot wind which veered to ESE as the day went on. At four pm, we were east of Cozumel with only 50 miles to go. We hove-to for two hours and had dinner. I then dropped the main and rolled away all but a tiny sail area and we set off, trying to slow down. The trouble was that we had a 2 knot current with us and, even with a tiny scrap of sail, we were going at 6 knots over the ground.
We arrived at a waypoint to the north of Cozumel in a gap between two, 20 metre deep banks. My original plan was to heave-to in the 10 mile stretch of water between the banks and the main coast, but the wind was blowing 25 knots with biggish 3-4 metre waves. I decided that we would be better off if we went back to the outside of the banks and heave-to there. We put the main up with two reefs in and spent 20 minutes beating back east. It was hell and I wanted to go to bed, so we turned back downwind, ran between the banks and hove-to about 6 miles offshore.
17 March 1996 Lighthouse Reef to Isla Mujeres, Mexico (Day 3)
It was one hell of a night. We were hove to for about 5 hours waiting for daylight. The wind blew at 25 knots and we had 3 metre seas with an occasional monster wave which would come roaring out of the inky black night and crash against the side of the boat, just to make sure that we weren’t becoming blasé.
At dawn, we were about 3 miles from the shore and in 40 metres of water, so we decided to start sailing again. We had a good romp to Isla Mujeres, and sailed right up to the outer buoy. We motored in, anchored near “Kalida” and went to bed!
At midday, I went over to an English boat “Barkis” and got some local knowledge from Dave and Pauline. Their last name is Howarth – small world! We went into town, changed some money and had lunch in a beachside restaurant – burritos, tacos, and tostadas – great! We then had a stroll around town. We expected it to be a sleepy little place, but in fact it is a bustling little tourist town with hundreds of souvenir shops. We like it, but it’s a bit of a shock after spending a week in splendid isolation at Lighthouse Reef. We went for a beer on “Cortisa” with Debbie and Dave.
18 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
I went into town and cleared in. It was very painless and quick. I was amused and grateful to the Immigration Official, who told me that I should pay “nada” to the Customs. In fact, the Customs guy was very nice and didn’t try to extract “mordida”. I did have to pay $20US to the Port Captain – he didn’t offer a receipt and I didn’t dare ask! I got off lightly compared to Honduras and Guatemala!
We walked into town and had lunch out again – I love Mexican food! We did a bit of shopping and returned to the marina in a taxi (4 pesos = $0.60US). Some of the cruisers in the marina were having a “happy hour”, so we joined in. Quite a lot of boring, old Americans.
19 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
The wind switched from S20 to N20 during the night and there’s a front around somewhere. We did school work in the morning. I filled 3 tanks. I spent an hour or so cleaning my dive compressor because someone was interested in buying it. He came and looked at it and said that he’d buy it for my asking price of $1500 US – you could have knocked me over with a feather – taking into account all the filters and oil I’ve bought for it, it has only cost me $960 US. For the first time in my life I’ll make a profit on selling something. Is this a good omen for the future? I’ll wait until I’ve got the cash in my hand before I gloat!
In the afternoon, Glenys and I walked up the road to some wholesale warehouses and bought two cases of beer and two cases of sodas. It was hard work carrying it all back. “Cortica” were letting the boys watch a video, so we stopped on the way back for a beer.
20 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
School work in the morning. Still blowing NNE 20-25 knots, blue skies, but fairly cold. In the afternoon, Glenys went into town and the boys and I stayed on board. I entertained myself by playing my clarinet with Band-in-the Box. Good fun! We had a quiet evening in.