At the Dock

Last week I put in our blog we were safe back in Belize. Before we every came down I heard people say sailing in the Western Caribbean you were always on a reach. I don’t think I have ever been on a reach going anywhere down here. Our boat sails better than it motors and we didn’t have nor do we have the money now for modern day motors so when we built the Pamela Ann our old home built top sail schooner I did what I could. We put two used VW motors out of two old rabbits cars to make up the power of one motor and one of them is giving trouble right now. Trying to go to wind is hard for us so we sail like the sailors of old using any tactic we can to get there. Coming back to Belize we had unstable weather. First we had to make the sand bar at the mouth of the Rio Dulce river coming out of Guatemala. The sand bar is higher than the 6 foot of draft of our boat. We waited on the tide to leave. Early morning crossing the bar and the wind was blowing with big waves as we crossed. Very hard to see the sea buoy. As I have said in other blogs I use the old way of running a range keeping the boat in line with a house roof on the land side and the sea buoy out to sea. Made that but had a hard time making the anchorage just 11 miles away. 4 hours of working the boat to weather. The next morning we left the anchorage at day light with the wind still blowing and turned back as we left the protection of the anchorage going in to big waves again. Stayed another day. The next morning we left with it perfect for two hours before it went bad again. Fought our way on in to New Heaven and out of the waves. This place is what you think of when you dream of anchoring in the Caribbean. No one there, no development just a beautiful protected anchorage. Next morning at 4am, wind still blowing so we just turned over and went back to sleep but about 5am we woke up to a beautiful day and light wind in our favor. Mad rush now to get the anchor up and go. Pam saying we need to just stay here and see if this weather will settle down some more today. Me saying, I’m not telling anyone we are waiting on weather and it this perfect. Two hours later Pam was saying, “I told you so.” as we were working strong wind and thunder storms again.

Thunder storms

If you look up in the clouds you can see water spout trying to form

When we turned in the lagoon at Little Harvest key we called the marina to maybe get help docking our boat the wind and rain whipping, but as we got there to the marina I simply turned in and backed in to our slip. No wind, just a little wet. How can you be proud of working a boat just 51 miles in 4 days. I’m sure the real sailors out there wouldn’t but as the storms rolled over us the rest of the week tied safely at the dock. Pam was smiling and I am glad to be here. Another thing we had to deal with was trash, trash as in whole trees floating out there. Rain washing thing out of the rivers in Honduras. Logs, limbs and just trash so with the hard tacking to wind you can add looking for something you could hit. We came right by a big whole tree complete with roots with Pam saying I was to close just after the rain let up in one of the thunder storms. Remember me saying we never sail on a reach going some where down here remember this too, very few people down here sail at all even going down wind. To be fair if we had two new little 45 Yanmar  motors, I’m sure our sails would last longer covered up under our sail covers too.

Pam happy at the dock

Back IN Belize

We are safe back in Belize tonight after a journey to Guatemala to clear up our immigration papers . You can only stay in Belize with your boat for 90 days and then you have to leave or import the boat. People here with boats are going or coming every few month to stay in good with there paper work. Remember you have to pay every time you check out and every time you check in. Guatemala it’s Q1300 ($175US) to check in and Q410 ($55US)to check out. Belize it’s 240BZ for the boat and BZ90($45US) for us to check in and BZ110(55US) for us to check out. We want to stay in Belize a few more months so we made the run to Guatemala and up the river there for two weeks and then came back here and we had to pay. We hope to stay 90 more days before we go back again. We have spent a lot of time in the Rio and the two weeks went by seeing old friends and doing things there. Here is a women I see a lot there in town and buy grapefruits from. The grapefruit I buy are the ones that grow wild in people’s yards. There not the domestic variety. These are wild and have a lot of seed. They have a different texture and I like them a lot. I also buy cheery tomato from her. The locals eat Roma tomatoes here and mostly cook with them. A round tomato is called an apple tomato ( manzanas tomate) and hard to find down here so cheery tomato are some times all you can find and a treat. If I see her and she has seen me, she will be jumping to make sure I see her as I walk down the street. I know she has something for me. If not she will be setting near her little fruit stand maybe 4 feet wide on the street but if she sees me even if she knows she has nothing for me she is always smiling with a wide smile and no front teeth. A women of a little over 4 feet tall, she won’t come anywhere near 5 feet. For the people that don’t know me well, I don’t like to be touched so all that hugging that go’s on in the world is out and my wife Pam will hug a tree but some how this little women looks huggable. I feel good when I see her.

We just brought a pineapple

This is the hard part of being a cruiser, the people that are in your world for just a short time. The river there is a true water world and most people that come there never see the world just up the creeks and water ways along side the river. Here is some of what that looks like. The little women that sell me grapefruit may live in a place like this.

No Internet ,Out To Sea

We are writing this from the river in Guatemala, the Rio Dulce in the Western Caribbean. We left Placencia, Belize last Sunday. A good friend of our came to help us sail back to Guatemala. She likes sailing and sailing is what we did coming back. A lot of people we see down here and others places we have sailed say they leave when they want and just deal with whatever is out there. That doesn’t work for us on our old home made top sail schooner we built ourselves with motors we took out of two old VW rabbit junked cars for auxiliary power. We do the tides and weather for days before we go. I try to learn the prevailing winds and try to use that. I try to use anything we can. Where we are in Belize the wind stops blowing late at night and starts to blow from the west and land after day light the next day. It starts as a light wind and will stop about 11:00 coming back from the other direction about 12 and by 2 it’s blowing hard always from 60 degrees. Day light Sunday when it was time to leave it was already blowing from 60 degrees maybe blowing,10 mph gusting to 15, this was unusual but we left with the wind with us. When we made the open ocean from the marina and lagoon we were in, we headed south raising the sails with out turning up in to the wind. When we got them up they were not set properly but we were making 7 knots plus so we just let it go. I’m sure the real sailors out there reading this are gasping for breath with us sailing with a few wrinkles in our sails. We saw two more sail boats behind us and I thought they would pass us but all day we sailed and they were always there. In the early afternoon the modern sail came from behind and past us on a different course but as we came to the anchorage we mostly came in together, we went forger up in the anchorage that they did. Listening to them talk on the radio you could tell they had never been there before but they did talk about our old schooner being out there with them. I was sure hopping they didn’t see that we did not bother trimming our sails better all day. We started out portable Honda 2K generator when we cut the motor off and stared sailing because our batteries are so bad they will brown out shortly after the battery charger goes off. It’s hot here this time of year and we need fans to service. The batteries won’t run our fridge, a luxury down here. The next day they left early before we did to make the short run across from the anchorage to Livingston and the dreaded bar at the mouth of the river. Straight across it’s maybe 11 miles. Again we were there at the bar at the same time because we went straight across and they went around the shoals. The shoals are 12 to 15 feet deep but looks bad on the chart plotter. Their boats were diffidently faster and I’m guessing with less draft. We draw 6 feet. The sand bar at the mouth is something over 5 feet at low water. There we watched as they went in and no one ran aground but no one went the course we use. There was a tide of over a foot we think. Most people use way points going in places like this and I do if I can’t set up a range doing it the old way. In this case the range I set up and we use is simple, stay as close as I can, “remember Pam won’t steer going over the bar”, on a course between a house top on shore and the sea buoy. In side we found we were one day late coming back to Guatemala and lost our permit we payed good money to have before we left to stay a year in Guatemala. We were told our time out would go to the back and we would not lose any time we payed for. We had to pay for our reentry and just go on. You can’t do anything about it. We needed to go back to Guatemala from Belize because we had stayed 90 days in Belize and they wanted us to declare our boat in Belize and pay crazy big money there for that. One reason we came down is to get out of Belize and stay in another country for a day before we can go back and they let us start over, the other is we had new batteries shipped here because in Belize they have a heavy duty tax on “anything” shipped down of maybe 30 present. Remember it cost more to live down here that the US. “Sometime a lot more” if you can even find what you need. Unskilled labor is always cheap. We are playing the games they make you play here and it always cost you money but there is always adventure here. We will let you know how we make out with getting our new batteries shipped from the US and if we make it back to Belize. We have things we want to do back up there and of course we still have our rickshaw back there waiting on the new gears I bought here. Remember you don’t just go buy what you want in the Caribbean.

Wild orchids grow all over Guatemala

Pamela Ann anchored in Guatemala

We will post a new blog Sunday.