Visitors aboard

Sandy and Marc are joining us for a week in Belize, so we came back to Caye Caulker. We dropped the anchor, but when we backed down to secure it, something didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel like it set and we were dragging. We pulled up the anchor to try again and found the culprit. We had hauled up a fence? A raft? Three 8-foot by 4- foot sections of something. Not sure what it was but it did take a bit of effort to untangle it from the anchor. All good, nothing was damaged.

Sandy and Marc flew into Belize City, cabbed to the pier and caught the water taxi for the 45-minute trip to Caye Caulker. We met them at the water taxi terminal and spent the next two days wandering around the town, shopping and visiting a few restaurants.

Interesting tidbit about Caye Caulker, it used to be one island. In 1961 Hurricane Hattie sent a massive storm surge across the island and wiped out a section of land. The locals have dredged the area to make it a navigable channel for small boats. A couple of bars have located themselves nearby to take advantage of the sand and the sea.

Sandy and Marc had a week with us, so the plan was to make our way south, approximately 85 nautical miles. We overnighted at 3 different anchorages on our way back to Placencia, where they would fly home from. With the wind from the east, we had perfect sailing conditions all the way down the coast. With most of the Belizean coast protected by the barrier reef, you often get good winds without the resulting big waves. Such was the case this week.

With the conch we had from the fisherman, Barb and Sandy made fritters. Not bad for our first attempt, they were pretty tasty! Along with homemade bread and guacamole, it all made for a yummy lunch.

When we got back to Placencia we picked up the gas shock for the boom vang and the other parts we had ordered a month ago. The boom vang should be a simple fix. Remove the end cap by drilling out the 8 rivets from the aluminum tube. Replace the shock and re rivet the end cap back on. But this is a boat and nothing goes that easy. 4 of the 8 rivets were stainless steel. Stainless steel requires a special drill bit. Stainless steel, aluminum and salt water don’t play nice together and the resulting corrosion is a royal pain in the butt! It took Derick and Marc a few hours to put that back together but mission accomplished, our vang is working again.

We also needed to do a minor repair to the sail. With no machine on board Barb’s hand sewing skills are put to the test. With thick sail material and the batten pocket material to go through, it takes a big needle, two people and pliers to push and pull the needle through.

We had been hanging around Placentia for a few days as the winds had shifted to the north and there are few anchorages that provide protection from that direction. We searched the guidebooks and found one called Rendezvous Caye. Its small but is reported to provide good protection if you anchor on the south side. Its 15 miles from Placencia so we though we’d give it a try. We departed a 7 am and sailed across the inner channel and weaved our way through the reef area. In the 3 hours that it took to get there the winds had picked up to 20 knots and the waves were wrapping around the Caye. It was going to make for a very rolly anchorage. Good thing we got an early start as we decided it was not going be a comfortable setting here, so we turned around and sailed right back to Placencia. Using our track from the trip over we doubled back through the reef and anchored back in Placencia in just about the same spot we left. If the rest of the anchorage was not paying attention they would not even know we had been gone. That’s the way it goes some days.