Lighthouse Reef 2003

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

017-11.700 N
087-35.820 W

Ahoy from Lighthouse Reef, Belize!

People must think that we've gone aground here as the position reports keep coming from the same basic area. Well, when you're at one of the best diving areas of the world, there's not a lot of impetus to leave! And believe me, this is fantastic diving. There are 3 major live-aboard dive boats that spend all week here moving around the reef from mooring ball to mooring ball. They arrive during the night on Saturday/Sunday and leave Friday evening. Clearly this doesn't leave a lot of time for maintenance, and last week that caught up with the Belize Aggressor III which had non-stop problems with generators, compressors, etc.

We monitor the same VHF channels (hey, what else are you going to do for entertainment aboard a sailboat?) and we all felt bad for the captain of the Aggressor. It seemed that all day long he was calling one of the other boats asking for assistance fixing one system after another. Amazingly they don't have a mechanic aboard and had to borrow the services and expertise from the other boats. Clearly these failures weren't transparent to their guests. Makes you think about questions to ask if you're booking a week aboard one of these live-aboard boats.

The population of the fleet has had some major fluctuations. We've gone from having the entire reef to ourselves to having half a dozen boats pull in at once. Both have been very enjoyable.  Some good friends of ours, Doug & Linda & the wonder dog Pip from Que Linda, arrived about a week ago.  I wanted to see them for friendship sake as well as getting a dive buddy. Sue had burned her leg on the compressor motor muffler and has stayed out of the water for about 9 days now. Her leg is healing up well, but she feels that it's prudent to stay out until it's well healed. Both Doug & Linda are divers and we've been doing 1-2 dives per day and having get-togethers on one another's boat.

BlueJacket certainly has been a hub of activity over the past week. Last week after some VERY successful lobster hunting excursions we had a lobster feast aboard BlueJacket. Sue & I split one tail that probably weighed 3 lbs. Man was that good having been marinated in butter/lemon/Teriyaki and then grilled. Yum! Then on Sunday, Kiwi with Tom & Julie aboard, pulled in and delivered fresh produce as well as medications. It was Julie's 29th birthday (+/- 20 years) and Sue & I had planned a feast. We had fresh crab dip, lobster fried rice, pork Moo Shu, garlic green beans and brownies! Add some rum & ice, the crews of Que Linda and Kiwi, and you've got a party. To say the least, a good time was had by all.

The weather that allowed the fleet to sail from Turneffe to Lighthouse was indeed strange...SSE winds! During Julie's birthday party we watched some ominous thunderheads to our west and north, flash lightening. We also listened to the dive boat fleet plan where they were moving to. Clearly they knew something that we didn't as the weather faxes didn't show anything for at least 24 hours. Well, that night at around 2 AM a cold front came sweeping through with 35 kt winds out of the N/NE, and the anchorage on the west side of Long Cay isn't protected from that direction. After 5 hours of getting tossed about and watching to make sure that we, or anyone else, wasn't dragging, we all moved to the other side of the island. Since then we've had squally weather.

I've been kept very busy fixing people computers. A boat named Restless, who we first met in Panama's San Blas islands, has been trying to get their e-mail working for years. I had worked on their software problems briefly last summer, but that didn't resolve their radio issues. Well, Marty tracked me down & I spent an afternoon buried, with schematics, in his radio trying to figure out what other "experts" had done. I was completely baffled as he said that he had connected one time, but I couldn't figure out how he could ever have done that. Eventually I rewired things the way that I thought that they should be and it worked! They have literally spent thousands of dollars and 4 years trying to get this to work. To say that they were happy would be an understatement. I've also been aboard Que Linda working software issues and aboard First Lady working on laptop hardware problems and their refrigeration. It's hard to find time to dive!

Speaking of fixing things, my lovely Fischer Panda generator suffered yet another failure! The other day I noted water under the generator and discovered that the diesel motor head had sprung an external leak. There are these things called "freeze plugs" which are located on the head and are supposed to pop out if the heads freezes. Well, a leak appeared next to one of these plugs. I sent FP an e-mail, didn't hear anything, and then decided to use MarineTex, which is an epoxy Bondo type product, to seal the leak. That did the trick & I wrote to FP informing them of my success. I got e-mail back from FP telling me that MarineTEx might be difficult to remove and that they would send me some new plugs! They seem to miss the point that we're 1-2 days from land, that it takes 4+ days to get things shipped "next day", and that this would yet again dictate our cruising schedule for a solid week. Just how many ways is this generator going to break?!?

Well this is getting a bit lengthy, so I'll wrap this up. Hope that you're all staying warm not letting all of the snow get you down.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 339