Sapodill Cays: Franks Cay: Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 28, 2002

016-8.400 N
088-15.600 W

Happy Thanksgiving from Franks Cay in the beautiful Sapodilla Cays of Belize!

This certainly was a unique way to spend Thanksgiving as I've always been land based before this year. This is not to say that it wasn't nice. It was just different. From what I can tell, Thanksgiving is a major turning point for boats in the Rio Dulce. Lots and lots of boats stay there until this holiday passes and then head out to the islands. I'm sure that we'll see lots of boats in the near future.

Backing up...We departed Moho Cay late in the morning and headed towards the Sapodilla Cays. One of the first things that became immediately obvious was that navigating using the DMA charts and the cruising guides in this area was going to be very different from my past cruising. The DMA charts are inaccurate and in the cruising guides the navigation is given using TRUE courses and bearings. Virtually none of the cruising guides includes lat/long waypoints. What makes it even more interesting is that many of the turning points don't have bearings associated with them, making it a guessing game. I'm very happy that I have lots of experience reading reefs and charts, as it could be very exciting without it. Most navigation is done through known turning points as large areas aren't surveyed. Thus there's no such thing as a direct route. While inefficient, it gets you there in one piece.

We started out with little wind, but it gradually increased, always on or close to the nose despite several turn points. The trip from Moho Cay to Seal Cay on a course of 85T had the wind on the nose and when we passed through the 50 yard wide pass at Seal Cay and turned towards Lime Cay at a course of 140T we could have sailed, but it was only 5 miles and there were lots of reefs awaiting and I didn't want to have to deal with dropping the sails amidst reefs. It was a good thing that we did so as the wind picked up tremendously and the reefs were worse than expected. We saw 4 cats anchored off of Franks Cay but headed on to Lime Cay. When we got to Lime Cay we found that the waves there were coming from 2 directions, making it a miserable anchorage. We headed north and couldn't find anything usable and in failing light headed towards Franks Cay. We regularly saw less than 10' and lots of coral heads. I tried to stay outside the reef, but regularly got suckered in.

The entrance to Franks Cay has 2 very shallow reefs (marked as "drying reefs", but I don't understand the nomenclature as they don't appear to ever get dry) which are about 75 yards apart. One reef was clear but the other wasn't. The fact that the sun was almost down didn't help. We anchored in front of the cats, but dragged. I could see a nice sand pit in front of us and decided to anchor there. I crept forward, regularly seeing depths of 6+ feet, and anchored in 6 feet (BlueJacket draws 5.5'). Thankfully we stuck well.

Frank's Cay is a small cay with what looks like a resort on it. However, it didn't appear that anyone, other than the care takers were there. The night and morning were filled with rain and strong winds. We were rolling big time with northerly swells coming through the entrance so I tried setting a stern anchor twice, but failed to achieve any real relief. Later the wind switched and I was able to get a good set, which I'm thankful for as we're now aimed as well as possible as we're still rolling. I would hate to see what would this would have been like without it!

Our time was spent reviewing charts and evaluating our weather options as many anchorages aren't suitable for the weather that expected over the next few days. We also went snorkeling and brought back 2 conches and I managed to lose 2 lobsters. We had a great dinner of steak, fresh bread, my Mom's yam souffle recipe and pumpkin pie. Oh, and a bottle of 1998 Stags Leap Petite Sarah that we brought with us from home. Yum!

Tomorrow it's a dive and then we're moving on. Can't tell you exactly where we'll end up...but my next report will provide the answer!
Log ID: 305