Moho Cay near Punta Gorda

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

016-9.120 N
088-40.200 W

Wow, 3 countries in 1 day while on a sailboat! Not bad! Yesterday we cleared out of Guatemala, spent the night in Honduras, and then headed to Belize. Of course it helps when all 3 come to a common point. Our night at Cabo Tres Puntas turned into a rolly one. What had been glassy seas turned into 1-2 foot waves from the NW starting at 2 AM. And of course these waves were coming directly from where we were headed. So we had to motor from Cabo Tres Puntas to Punta Gorda, Belize where we checked in.

Checking into Belize was simple and cost $10 US. Unfortunately the customs inspector that came out to the boat fell into the water when getting back onto the dock. He didn't get hurt and thankfully we were done clearing in! But the agricultural inspector confiscated most of our fresh fruits and vegetables. I guess that they're having problems with Med flies from Guatemala, so they took them. This is new and we hadn't heard about this. On the NW Caribbean net this morning I warned people about this. What was so sad was that we had just stocked up on these and we weren't able to find replacements for some of them in Punta Gorda.

From Punta Gorda we headed to Moho Cay. Moho, which means mold or mildew, is a common name for cays, so you have to be careful to specify which one. There are 4 small cays which make up these Moho cays. We anchored by the southern cay which had 3 young guys living on it. They seemed to spend most of their time cutting brush. I tried to dive on the anchor, but the water was so cloudy that I couldn't find it. I did note that there was a 4' patch much too close to the starboard side of the boat which we could end up on if the wind switched. We re-anchored in 8' about 100 yards off the shore almost perpendicular to the dock. It was a good thing that we did re-anchor as during the night the winds switched and we would have been blown onto the shoal.

It rained hard on and off all evening. When I got up I started my lovely Fischer Panda generator to run the refrig, charge the batteries and run the water maker. While the boat was in the Rio Dulce I had them run it every 2 weeks and when I returned I did some minor maintenance on the water pump. Everything was running fine. Well, about 15 minutes into operation it suddenly made this metallic rapping sound and shut down. When I looked at it there was nothing externally visible and when I tried to start it I could hear an internal rapping sound as well as a sound like air whooshing and not even the slightest hint of starting. Something very bad happened to the engine.

Now, you have to realize that I've had nothing but problems with this generator. It's already had 1 new engine put into it, and it has less than 1500 hours on it. Margaritaville has the same generator and is on its second motor. If you want to read my history of this generator and Fischer Panda, go to http://www.deja.com/ and type in "A Precautionary Note About Fischer Panda Generators" as the title. Needless to say, this is the final straw for this generator.

All is not lost though. I can still run the refrig through the engine drive and the water maker is 12V, so I can keep cold and wet via the engine. It just drives me crazy! But when this kind of thing happens, I just say "I love my Fischer Panda generator." It's much nicer than anything else that I might be thinking!

Today it's on to the Sapodilla cays where the water is clear and the diving is great! It'll be a strange place to have Thanksgiving, but it should be fun! Diving on Thanksgiving...hum...

That's it for now. On to Belize!
Log ID: 304