Glover's Reef is the last of the Belizian atolls for us to visit. It's about 14 miles long and 6 miles wide. The vast majority of the interior is open and relatively deep, making it unique among its peers. The northern end is about 15 miles from the southern end of Turneffe Island. We had a great sail from Turneffe, albeit a bit bumpy from the waves churned up by the tropical wave that can through the day before. When we got into the lee of Glover's it turned smooth as silk. Just wonderful!
The day of rest and diving at Turneffe didn't quite turn out as planned. The morning was dark and rainy, then it cleared for a while, and by the time that we had lunch and had our gear together, the skies had darkened and the wind and seas had picked back up. We decided not to dive on the windward side as it was a bit rough and instead went off to find a set of coral heads that Queen Mary had shown us and to bring back some lobster. Unfortunately it was dark enough that we couldn't find the area and we could see heavy rain headed our way, so we just headed back to the boat.
The next day, Thursday, we sailed to Glover's and we actually saw another sailboat on the horizon. In BlueJacket's normal fashion we quickly caught up to them and we both pulled into the southern entrance. They used the eastern cut and we used the western cut. It turns out that the eastern is much easier to use as you don't have to dodge patch reefs for a mile or so. Luckily we had good light.
Our first attempt at anchoring wasn't successful, so Sue started pulling the chain up. I looked over at the dinghy and realized that there was too much painter (dinghy line) out in the water and just as I reached over to pull some in, the line wrapped around the prop shaft and the dinghy started to get pulled under the boat. I have line cutters installed on the shaft and they quickly did their job, and the dinghy popped right back up only to begin quickly drifting away. I yelled to Sue to leave the anchor down and dove in to retrieve the dinghy. We had often commented that the painter was just too long and that it should be shortened. Well, it's much shorter now! I'm still not quite sure how it got into the prop shaft as the line floats, but it did.
After we got successfully anchored the woman from the other sailboat swam over and introduced herself to us. She was really glad to see another cruising boat as everyone has fled the area. Kristi and her husband, Pascal, have a steal boat named Titam and are also headed to the Rio Dulce. We gave them a ton of information on the area as they don't even have charts of the area! They had planned on spending hurricane season in the US, but several months ago they found out that they couldn't get visas until late July, which was just too late. As a result they went to Cuba and then headed down to the Rio. After we went snorkeling we had them over for drinks and had a very nice time. They're Swiss, but speak impeccable English as well as 4 other languages. Hopefully we'll see them in the Rio. They're headed off tomorrow at first light. We plan to hang around here a day and dive.
That's about it from here. Hope all is well back at the ranch!
-- Geoff & Sue
Log ID: 405
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