Tres Puntas, Guatemala to Ranguana Cay, Belize

2/23/15

s/v Vida Dulce

My captain is very good at reading charts and plotting waypoints.  We were also fortunate to have friends that added their comments and waypoints to places we were heading.  Finally around 1:00 we could see Ranguana Cay, as the Rauscher book stated, “It is visible by the tall palm trees”.  So now we are using our chart plotter to find the entrance into the reef.  Seems I am now at the helm again as Charlie directs me by how many degrees port or starboard I have to steer in order to pass through the reef.  I have to tell you I was doing a lot of praying at this point with sweaty palms, but we made it through. (Thank you Lord)… As luck would have it Jerry and Susan were arriving at the same time, we couldn't have planned it any better.

So, here in front of us is the lovely little island of Ranguana Cay, beautiful white sand beaches and huge palm trees.  There is one other power boat at anchor in the lee of the island, so again we go through the procedure of anchoring, another practice and another victory.  There is a lot of wind now and the sea, even inside the reef is choppy, which makes our boat somewhat unpleasant with all the tossing around.  Charlie dove the anchor to make sure it was in, of course it wasn't so I had to start the boat again and put it in reverse and give it 2700 RPMs and that did the trick.  I couldn't wait, I had to jump in too, I was so glad to be in such beautiful water. 

Later that evening we made our way to s/v Vida Dulce for cocktails and dinner with Susan and Jerry.  They have a 44’ Lagoon Catamaran.  Wow, this is a huge boat.  Cats are so roomy and I have to say I was just a little bit envious.  Jerry and Susan have retired from the Seattle, Washington area and are enjoying their 5+ years cruising.   Jerry is writing an app for an anchor alarm and he has a 3D printer on board with which he has made parts for his boat…pretty amazing. 

Susan showed me all of her molas from the Kuna Indians of the San Blas Islands of Panama.  We hope to sail there at the end of this year.  These molas are an amazing pieces of handwork.  There are usually 3 layers of cloth, black being the predominate color.  I don’t know if I can explain this well enough, but the material is cut and folded back under to reveal the next layer of color and so on.  The handwork is amazingly tiny.  As Susan informed me that a mola master makes stitches that are not seen, using thread in the same color of the layer he/she is working on.  Their lines must be very straight and the widths of the color lines are also thin.  Susan purchased a mola that Vecincio made over a period of 6 months, it was truly a work of art.  At any rate, I really appreciated the education into what to look for when I get the opportunity to purchase molas.  The whole culture is worth a story unto itself….so I will report on that when we get there with pictures of the molas I intend to buy.

We had a wonderful dinner and great company that night.  Susan sent us home with 6 homemade chocolate cookies for coffee the next morning….Susan you are a life saver!

2/23/15

Today we got into the water and headed to the reef for some snorkeling.  Jerry was with us, as Susan is not a water person….hmmm, how can that be?  The current and the waves were very strong and it didn’t take long for me to be out of breath and energy.  And, to add to this misery, we really didn’t see that many fish.  We moved to the south end of the island where the water was more protected.  The visibility was poor, but I had my first shark encounter.  In all the years Charlie and I have been diving, from Mexico, Florida, Bahamas and Roatan, I have never seen a shark.  Now, I am glad in some respects, but it was very exciting to see this 4’ nurse shark.  Hey, that is the best first encounter to have in my book…a shark that doesn’t have those huge teeth and are very docile.  I watched it swim away, I’m sure he doesn’t like to have encounters with people either.  After dropping Jerry off, we had 3 porpoise follow our dingy back to Island Sol.  I really wanted to drop over the side and be in the water with them, but I was not sure how wild porpoise would react to that, so for now I held back…but that would be a check off on my bucket list for sure.  The pod stayed on the starboard side of our boat for some time.  It appeared to be one mature and two immature porpoise just swimming around and having fun  Such beautiful creatures!