2/27/15
Two days of February left, where does the time go? We have arrived at the southern end of
Lighthouse Reef – the smallest of the Belizean atolls. I never get tired of looking at this
water. This morning it is a greenish
aqua and we are anchored in 10’ of water with a sandy bottom, some turtle
grass, but not like at Glover’s Reef.
Our passage yesterday from Glover’s wasn't as bad as the days before,
but I had intestinal “difficulties” which left me limp as a dishrag and not
much help to Charlie. Although I did
rally by the time we had to make our entrance through the reef and anchor. We are now at an anchorage on the west side
of Long Cay. On a personal note, I gain
more confidence with each arrival to a new island. I have total confidence in my captain and I
am his dutiful first mate or Admiral as the case may be.
Susan and Jerry on s/v Vida Dulce have been wonderful
boating buddies and I look forward to more time with them in Mexico. Not sure what today brings as Charlie is on
Vida Dulce planning the next part of our itinerary. I, in the meantime, am enjoying some coffee
and watching the sea. To our starboard
is Long Cay with mangroves along this shoreline. There is a beach, but we are betting it is
full of sand fleas – the dreaded “no-seeums”, so we are not going ashore to
explore. Off of our stern is Half-Moon
Cay which is part of a National Park, which has an entrance fee. There is a bird rookery with Blue Footed
Boobies nesting there. This would be
interesting to see, but alas it is not on the itinerary. So we are off again for the 16 mile sail to
Northern Cay. Yeah, we are finally
sailing and with a 17 knot wind. Island
Sol is doing 7 knots, and we are pulling our dingy, too. Charlie tries fishing again but there is just
too much sargassum weed which is continually fouling his rigs.
We have picked our way between Northern Cay and Sandbore Cay
to anchor. We have reefs on both sides
and Charlie is contemplating on putting out a stern anchor, but the wind is out
of the East now, so we will just watch and see what the wind does. After some lunch we took the dingy to
Southbore Cay and walked around over half of the island, finding small
treasures along the way, how many shells can one boat hold? The light house which is a 200’ tall metal
structure has an osprey nest on top.
Through the binoculars we could see 2 heads in the nest with Mom and Dad
situated nearby. These offspring appear
really large so maybe they will be fledging soon.
2/28/15
After listening to Chris Parker (our weather guru) on the
SSB radio, it appears we will spend another day and night on Sandbore Cay. So we decided to explore Northern Cay, which
as the Rauscher book says, has a state of the art Dive Center, an airstrip,
hotel/restaurant and bar. The problem,
which is occurring more and more often, the Rauscher book was printed 7 years
ago and come to find out this whole island, was closed down in 2006 and the
place is pretty much dilapidated. We
walked the beach and met an Italian guy who was raking the seaweed away from
the beach. He and a few Belizeans live
in the deserted cabanas of the resort.
We walked the airstrip and saw a few iguanas and so ended our exploring
of Northern Cay. Charlie and Jerry later
took the dingy out for some snorkeling.
Again they saw some beautiful coral but hardly any fish.
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