South Water Cay 2004

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

016-49.020 N
088-5.040 W

Ahoy from South Water Cay, Belize!

Belize it or not, we had another wonderful sail yesterday with 18-22 kts of wind. We decided to stay at North Long Coco for another day as the wind and waves just weren't cooperating. The goal was to get to Glover's reef, which is NNE of the cut in the reef at Gladden Spitt. The winds, which had been out of the NE, moved around to the E, which would have put us hard to the wind. I wasn't in favor of sailing hard into 25+ kts of apparent wind and 5-7 seas on the nose for 15 miles. So, we decided to take along the inside of the reef to South Water Cay.

We put a double reef in and headed out with clear blue skies. The water behind the reef was calm, and we were flying along at 7-8 kts with the boat perfectly balanced. It was a *wonderful* day to be sailing. It's exactly the reason that you sail. Luckily we had good sun because for the first 10 miles you have reefs close-by on both sides. In good light they typically stand out as bright blue or dark brown areas. And then there's the occasional shallow spot in the middle of the channel... Needless to say you wouldn't want to do this in bad light, but we had great light, so there was no problem.

After you leave the channel you have to cross a 3 mile area that's marked as having 6-9' of water. You've just come out of 90+ feet of water, so this is a bit unnerving. On top of that, the depths wildly fluctuate. One minute you're in 35' and the next you're in 10'. You literally have to wind your way between shallow spots. I don't know what would happen if you didn't, but I sure didn't want to find out! As it turned out, we didn't have any problems and anchored behind South Water Cay just after noon. Be sure to get here in good light so that you can find the sandy holes where you drop your anchor. A Moorings' cat that came in at dusk yesterday was about 1/2 a mile back this morning from where they dropped their anchor.

The sailing was so calm that Sue made bread along the way. She learned a recipe/technique for making bread on top of the stove in a pot. It turns out really good bread in about the same time as an oven loaf. When we got in we had sandwiches on hot bread. Yum! Last night we went into the resort for dinner and just like the last time that we were here, we had an OK meal that was too expensive. (But we did score a bag of ice.) Reminder: Don't waste the money and eat aboard.

The whole purpose of coming here was to make the trip to Glover's more tenable. The distance from both cuts is equal, so one might think that it was silly to come here. From here we're going to have an ESE course and the winds are out of the E, but we'll be in the lee of Glover's reef, which should make the seas MUCH smaller. Brandy made the trip yesterday through Gladden's Cut, but their cockpit is much higher up (and drier) than BlueJacket's, so I think that we made the right decision. Time will tell!

-- Geoff & Sue who appear to have malfunctioning wind instruments again
Log ID: 455