Pelican Cays

Monday, December 2, 2002

016-40.800 N
088-11.400 W

Ahoy from the beautiful Pelican Cays of Belize. If I were to say that the weather for the past 2 days has been anything other than spectacular I'd be lying. It's been clear with day time temps in the low 80s and in the mid 70s at night. The air has been very dry and with a wonderful breeze. At night the stars have jeweled the skies. Just beautiful! And it sure didn't hurt to be in a completely flat anchorage!

After spending two nights at Rendezvous (I could never spell that word before) Cay, we decided that we needed to move further north. There's a major cold front coming and we need to get to somewhere protected from strong northerly winds/waves. So we said goodbye to Rendezvous and headed to the Pelican Cays. We choose to take the Victory Channel route as it kept us in deep water all of the way. This is opposed to going through coral head strewn waters of 12-20 feet. Tough choice.

As has been the case this entire trip, the windex pointed the way that we were going. For those non-sailors, that's the wind direction pointer on the mast that shows apparent wind direction. When it points within 30 degrees of forward, you can't sail. Actually, that's not quite true. We could have sailed the first 3.5 miles from Rendezvous to the Victory Channel...We ended up going 6 miles west and 9 miles north. The westing provided great views of the mountainous mainland.

I had to laugh as we passed a tiny cay with what appeared to be a thatched roof Tiki bar with a single table and thatched roof umbrella. I mean, this was all that this cay could fit! Talk about optimism! Who's going to go there and it sure looks like the first strong storm would wash it away. I would have loved to have stopped, just to have grabbed a photo & said that I was there, but it was about a mile out of the way.

The DMA charts here are useful to figure out the names of the cays, but almost useless for navigation. The smallest scale is 1:150000 and they don't begin to have enough detail to be useful. The Rauscher guidebook is very good for relative position, but is off lat/long-wise. Granted, it's often not off by much, but when you're navigating among lots of very small islands closely positioned, the error is significant.

The Pelican Cays are such an area. There are about 10 cays that make up the Pelicans. Most of these cays are simply mangroves perched on reefs. Some have an actual sandy land mass, but most don't. The area teems with wildlife. They didn't name them the Pelican cays for nothing!

Getting into here was interesting. The charts give true courses from positions in the middle of the water. You carefully plot your current position while trying to figure out which cay is where. They're closely packed and blend together from the ground. From the air I'm sure that it's obvious, but not from the ground. There are lots of submerged reefs and shoals, so you need good light to see them.

The water between the cays is very deep; 70 feet on average. And that what you get to anchor in too! So, for my good friend Eric, who has a Swan 51 which draws 11'2", here's a place where you could get to and anchor! We dropped all 200' of chain and another 60+ of road, and stuck the first time. Sue was glad, as she's the one on the windlass and certainly didn't want to have to re-anchor.

We had the anchorage to ourselves at first, but then a Mooring's charter boat pulled in and we went over and had a nice visit with them. The Swedish Mooring's cat that anchored on top of us the other day also pulled in and went right up to the beach in an attempt to find some shallow water. It gets deep very fast here, but I guess that they felt secure dropping hook on a steep bank. During the night a squall line came through and suddenly there was lots of shouting from their boat and they were lighting up the shore. Daylight revealed that they had to tie themselves onto the mangroves. Snicker...

Anyhow, this is a beautiful, out of the way place. Tons of fish and birds. Despite what the guide book shows, there's no snorkeling worth your time. Today its on to SW Cay and then out to the reefs. Until then, be well!

-- Geoff & Sue BlueJacket
Log ID: 312