I would like to put and end to the vicious rumor that the GPS display aboard BlueJacket is frozen at the Lat/Long of Tortugal marina! Yes, we really managed to pull away from the dock and are now out CRUISING! Yeah! We decided to stick around on Saturday so we could go out to dinner with a whole group of friends. Casa Perico offers a BBQ buffet on Saturday nights for $40Q ($5 USD) that can't be beat. All had a great time.
On Sunday we did our final prep work and pulled away from the dock at about 11:00. We headed down river under a spectacularly blue sky. The trip through the canyon at the end of the Rio Dulce was as spectacular as ever. I just love cruising down a river with vertical cliffs towering hundreds of feet above you. You often lose perspective on how high they are until you're provided with a reference. In this case we had an older 25-30' Freedom cat/ketch come by and they we could see just how small the boats were relative to the cliffs.
We anchored off of La Marine, which is a marina in Livingston and went to Sky Hook for drinks before diner. Sky Hook is a trimaran (3 hulled boat) owned by a Brit named Michael who was staying at Tortugal. He and his girlfriend were headed off to the Sapodilla cays for a week or two of cruising. Multihulls are very fast (Sky Hook cruises at 9-12 and reaches 18 kts), but need to be pretty light. It was a very nice boat, but very scantly appointed. I'm sure that it's a lot of fun, but I don't know that I'd want to do long distance cruising on it. I like my amenities. Dinner at La Marine was just OK.
The next morning we cleared out and headed out at around 9:30. There was a 1.3' high tide at 10:20, and I wanted to make sure that if we got stuck going across the sand bar at the entrance, that we did it on a rising tide where there's a chance to float free. We crossed with about 1.2' of tide and only briefly saw 6.3' under the keel. Most of the time we saw 6.6' and above. (Eric, no you can't get Antares' 11' draft into the Rio without a trencher in front of it!)
We turned westward towards Punta Gorda, Belize and had 8 kts true on the nose. Remember Geoff's first rule of cruising: the arrow (windex wind pointer) points the direction that you want to go. :-( We motored to Punta Gorda to clear in. We walked into Customs at 1:05 PM and found the Customs guy watching TV and the look on his face was precious: "Aw man, I'm watching TV and you want me to WORK?" We saved him from working for while as the immigrations person wasn't there yet, so we went to the bank and bought some veggies.
We were cleared in within 45 minutes and were quite surprised when we got back to the boat. The wind had switch to the NE and was blowing at 15+ kts and was quite the chop. I'll bet that you'll never guess what direction our destination was! Two other boats had gone in prior to us and were still somewhere in town. They were going to be surprised when they got back.
We had planned on going to Moho Cay for the evening, but when we looked at map, we saw that Moho cay had a NE orientation and wouldn't provide any protection. We decided to go to Stuart Cay which appeared to give good protection. The problem is that the area right around Stuart is strewn little reefs and we had to wind our way into the anchorage. Not something that I'd like to do in bad light. Geoff's number 2 rule of sailing: If it's brown, go around!
At around 4:00 we heard one other sailboat which was at Punta Gorda calling the catamaran which had been there. They didn't get an answer, so we called back. They asked some questions about Moho Cay and sailed on. At about 5:00, with the sun setting, the catamaran started approaching the anchorage. They were crossing right across the reef! I jumped into the dinghy with the portable depth sounder and went out and guided them in. At about 7:00, in complete darkness, I saw another sailboat approaching (following the Raucher guide's suggested route) and somehow they managed to get in here without grounding! That ended up being the boat asking questions about Moho. Man, maybe it was uncomfortable, but it's a lot better than being in Davie Jone's locker!
After a wonderful dinner we crashed and today we need to find a place to hide out as there's a major cold front headed our way. Boats off of Mexico are already reporting 25-30 kts of wind well before the front. We're headed to New Haven or Placencia.
-- Geoff & Sue
For the cruiser:
Guatemala clear out costs are $50Q for customs, $60Q for port captain, and $80Q per passport. Bring exact change.
Belize clear in costs: $0 (if the agriculture inspector is there, they charge $10 US) Note that it looks like if you get there at 13:00 that there's a good chance that they won't be there...
Livingston waypoints:
Sea Bouy: 15 50.125N 88 43.927W
Inside Bar: 15 49.411N 88 44.615W
Stuart Cay entrance waypoints: Note, need to provide bow watch with good light:
1) 16 08.094N 88 42.892W
2) 16 08.117N 88 43.314W
3) 16 08.358N 88 43.556W
4) 16 08.590N 88 43.503W (anchorage)
Edited on 1/20/2007 to reverse route and location of anchorage. They were backwards.
Log ID: 447
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