Back In Belize

We are setting here writing this in a beautiful little harbor in Belize with not another boat in site. We are sailing back to stay two more months in Belize and then if we can keep a schedule we are headed back to our slip in Guatemala. We plan to leave our boat there, fly back to the states and maybe work on a project we have going on up there. Maybe stay there 3 month and let it cool off some down here. A friend reminded me the other day that he as we are too, are not magazine sailors . We stopped here because the wind is blowing maybe 15 gusting to 20 on our nose. We stared at first light this morning in Guatemala when we could see the nets the fishermen set out at night, every where here. No place is off limits. Listening to wild monkeys at first light still gives me a thrill getting the anchor up. The wind was low but it was bumpy when we got out to seas with the wind blowing most of the night. Now we just had to make 20 nautical miles before we could duck back in and hope the wind wouldn’t pick up again before we got there like it doses every evening. Now tomorrow we need to leave here before daylight and be out of this anchorage headed back the wrong way for a mile and a half before we can head north again and into the wind again. The first 12 miles are the most important for how hard the trip will be because they are straight into the wind after that the wind angel changes some and now if we have to sail we will have a long tack and a short one. Still slow and hard going. Why would we even have to sail and not just motor into it. Our boat doesn’t motor well into waves with the wind blowing against it and if we can sail we can go faster off the wind than we can motor into it but here as I said it is into the wind going to Belize from Guatemala most days. Why are we not magazine sailors? Magazine sailors have modern boats that go to wind well and wright great story’s. They go to schools get degrees and sail every where dropping there sails only when they dock their boats. Have many 250 miles days, they say, logged in their log books but “here we are” sailing around down here on and old home built top mast schooner with car motors ( little VW diesels ) for power hopping to make 20 miles in the early morning light winds before the wind starts to blow. Tacking a gaff headed schooner to wind you don’t need a degree but maybe a trip to a Doctor is in order if you start thinking it’s fun. Going to sea is not that much fun anyway but the magazine sailors make it sound so good. “I like land fall, coming in not going out. ” I have seen a lot of people kiss the grown when they got off a boat after being out to sea. I have seen a lot more women than that calling a cab looking for the airport. Why are we still doing it, going to sea with us in our 70s? It’s harder now but like I just said, Pulling the anchor at first light with monkeys letting the world know they are there still gets to me. Here in this anchorage we met two boats just leaving as we came in, they were waiting on the wind to pick up before they headed south. This is the ace we always hold trying to work our way north up this coast and we have used it. If it get too bad, it’s good sailing going back to the anchorage to just wait and try it again in a day or two. Magazine sailors never turn back. I’m sure magazine sailors would just carry on eating freeze dried cumbers and making miles. Pam and I are setting here waiting on better weather with something on the stove that smells like chicken cooking and I’m listening to the waves coming on shore on the other side of the little land strip we are behind. Life is good even if we are not great sailors. Come to think of it, “I don’t think I have ever been great at anything. Maybe that is why I’m so good at not being great. Maybe the reason we have an old schooner is like an old boat builder told me once. He ask, “Building a schooner?” I said, “Yep, a gaff headed schooner.” He said, “ I bet you like mules.” I said “I do, I really do.” He said then you will like that little schooner . What a mules likes to do it will do well but what it don’t it won’t, schooners are like that.” Maybe the wind will clock around in the early morning tomorrow and we will see how she, our old schooner likes it. Remember what she likes, she does well but what she don’t she won’t but the wind generator is keeping the refrigerate working good and we have ice cream in paradise and just maybe a little more time to enjoy this anchorage all by ourselves.

The sun coming up as we left the quit anchorage with the water comb.

 

Even trees in some of it

Grass every where out to sea with trees

A women ask me to help her get on the ferry launch going to customs to check in and hold her baby so she could get in the boat. I’m scared of babies so Pam to the rescue.

Made Guatemala

For all that follow our blog we are back in Guatemala and out of Belize for now. We have been having a lot of trouble with our old VW car motors we have in our old home built sailboat for power. By now you know we are poor sailors and just do the best we can with what ever we can find. We have lived our lives forever mostly living that way. Our son flew down from the states to help with the motors and said we need technical help so we took the injector and fuel pump to the bad Mennonites there in Belize (they use electricity and drive cars the good Mennonites drive horses and only sing in church. ) in Spanish look out and they reworked every thing in there lab and the motors are running again. In Belize you can only stay in there country for 90 days then you have to leave with your boat or pay to have your boat imported. Not only do you have to do that you have to go every 30 days and get an extension. With the motors running we left Belize and headed south with wind on our port stern. As we sailed along two sail boats past us, motors running and making time. As we dropped our anchor in the little anchorage in Guatemala just off Livingston the boats that pasted us were there already anchored up. It felt good that we sailed down and didn’t motored down but it felt good to know we could start a motor if we needed to. We set there in the already hot Caribbean evening listening to wild monkeys in the jungle near where we were making their evening roar. We needed to cross the bar the next morning because the tide was high at 7 :30 and we draw 6 feet. The bar is 5 feet and maybe 6 inches at low tide. The other boats left before daylight but we waited so we could look for nets. At the bar we saw a big tug setting what I thought was in the middle of the channel but as I lined up on the range I made up myself I saw he was way out of the channel if there is a channel. Going in I keep our boat lined up with a house roof on shore and the sea buoy behind us. As we were crossing the bar at the mouth of the river the water was dropping to near 6 feet and I was going slow when it stared going back up a little and I thought we were across, then we hit. The boat stopped and I stared our starboard motor, running both motor full bore and turning the rudder from sided to side, she, our little 26 ton top sail schooner “Pamela Ann” stared to twist a little and we moved just a little then we stared moving a little more bumping along and then we were off and over. It’s hard to tell what that feels like to hit bottom with your boat and need help. It’s bad but this time we made it and you know that felt really good. Waiting on customs to check in we watched them trying to get the big tug off and back in the channel if there is one like I said. A small tug was working and the big tug was not moving. Another big fishing boat showed up and then a lot of boats stared coming. Big tug still not moving then a lot of launchers stared coming. In all maybe 20 boats of all sides were pulling or pushing and I was thinking maybe I had never seen anything like this. I ask Pam if she thought I needed to go over there and supervise or at least give advice. I don’t think we need to put her response here in print. Some one was supervising because they stared pulling it backward and it moved a little. More changes were made and they got it off. As I sat there watching now a lot of the boats were coming by after they left the big tug I realized it was a lot like something I may would do in a place like this, just get more boats to pull and any boat willing to pull hard will do. People down here live in a world were they just do what they can. Back in our slip in the Rio Dulce now it feel good to to be back where life is some what simple. Even going to sea for a short trip it feels safe to be anchored up or as we are laying to a good dock. We think it’s the best dock in the Rio it feels good to be here after worrying if our motors are going to keep on running and remember we hit the bar for the first time this trip coming in. Now we have a little pecker wood pecking on our mast in the early morning. They say here the males do it to let the females know there here. I have seen one peck on and aluminum light pole once. Maybe we all have our little worries. Maybe even them little pecker wood worry a little about Pam out there in the morning in her night gown shaking the rigging and bothering there little morning serenade.

Big boat aground

Anchored off the town of Livingston Guatemala

One of many houses along the Rio Dulce

Still In Belize

For all that read our blog we are still in Belize but are leaving soon. This week we will be out to sea. We are still playing the games countries make you play to stay in their countries down here. We have to leave by the 11th this month here or they my do something to us they say. We want to go back to Guatemala and there we can stay a year if we pay the money. We plan to come back to Belize for maybe a few months before we pay for the year in Guatemala for the boat. It’s complicated but we have something going on in the US and this is all necessary. If all this works with us going back to the US for a little while it may pay us some money. If that works we can travel more but first we need to go there to the US and stay a few months then we can come back here to our boat and live a few months in the Caribbean before we go back to the US for Christmas and do some more. Like I said It’s complicated. We are not swallowing the hook and giving up cruising but we may be changing the way we cruise for a little while. I am not ready to tell the world what we are doing back in the states but it’s good and as you may be guessing, “We will be working there”. Here the cashew nut are coming on the trees but the cashew fruit is just starting to grow above the nut. A friend of ours just caught a hundred pound grouper, “That was impressive. A lot of the cruiser here are finding places to leave their boats for the summer and going home. It’s getting hot here and even the tourist are leaving. The tourist season here is about over. This will be the first time we are going with them. How hot does it get here in the early summer. The upper 90s every day but it’s the sun, the hot Caribbean sun. You just have to get out of the sun and find a breeze. If you read our blog you know we were here just before Christmas listening to the Christmas parade on the radio where everyone was complaining about it being so cold. It was 72 degree that night here in Belize and they were complaining it was really cold . In the summer it never goes below 80 at night and it rains a lot. If we go back to the states for a month or so we plan to fly into New Orleans and get our old motorcycle a friend has there and ride it to Kansas. Eleven hundred miles of open back roads are calling us again. Let the people that ride really big bikes have the interstate we will take the state roads so we can see something and go slow. Money seems to always get in the way with us but we most of the time we find a way to always go on a little. My Granddaddy always said the struggles of life is what makes life good or bad. Our old sailboat we call home we built ourselves is home made and our old motor bike is old a ’87 model and just a 450 hp but here we are in paradise as they say. Even if the struggle is hard sometimes life is good and doing what we want in life makes it even better.

Local living the Simple life

Iguana hiding, but we could see it’s tail