The Turneffe Islands, or more correctly, the Turneffe Atoll, is about 30 miles long by 10 miles wide at the widest and runs more or less on a N-S axis. According to one guide book, the interior is over 200 square miles. It's big! The interior is too shallow for navigation by boats with more than a 3' draft. A fringing reef surrounds the island. The western side of the reef is very wide and is about a mile from the shore of the island. An interior channel runs between the reef and the island and based upon the sketchy charts, should be navigatible. The island is basically hundreds of mangrove cays grown together to basically form a continuous island. Other than an occasional fish camp, there's virtually no development visible.
On Monday we headed out of Half Moon Cay and had a very nice downwind sail to the N end of Turneffe. The wind was dead behind us, making for a rolly ride once we cleared the lee of Lighthouse reef. Brandy and Lulu left well before us. At about 1:30 we anchored in our normal spot near the creek at Big Cay Bokel. Brandy and Lulu were headed out diving at 2:00, and we missed it because there just wasn't time to get the boat pulled together and secured before then. They dove at what's known as "The Elbow" and had a good dive without much current. Quite often there is a lot of current, they were lucky.
The next day Lulu headed for the main-land and Brandy claimed to be doing the same thing. We were headed to the N end of Turneffe and decided to pick up a dive ball located off of Blue Creek. We've seen lots of big dive boats stopping there, so we figured that it must be worth while. WRONG! From what we can tell it's a spot to checkout divers before bringing them out to Lighthouse where it's deep. Other than some nice coral heads, there wasn't much to see. We both came back with over 1/2 of our tanks left and after stowing everything and having some lunch, we headed N.
The sail along the reef was beautiful. I kept the boat in the deep blue water right along the reef. At times I'd slide into the lighter blue water where it was 30-50' deep. Right next to that the reef comes close to the surface and has lovely green hues, ranging from dark green to bright green and mixing with the blues in between. Coral heads appeared as brown spots near the surface. You didn't want to wander too close to the green! For the first half of the sail we were pretty much on a beam reach doing 7+ knots in flat water. Talk about great! Then we had to turn NE and we were heeled 15+ degrees over for the rest of the trip, but we were making great time.
We had been given 4 waypoints to get us into the anchorage at Rendezvous Point, but it was a piece of cake getting in and we anchored in a sand hole. You can pretty much work your way most of the way to the shore and anchor in 7-10'. And surprise, surprise, Brandy was here! They changed their mind after talking to me and listening to the weather on the SSB net. They had already done a dive and were very non-pulsed about it. They dove from the cut southward and reported that there wasn't much to see and very few fish. We had them over for dinner and had a great time. They departed the next day for Cay Caulker and we went out diving.
Based upon their experience we headed N and dropped the anchor basically parallel with the end of the island and worked our way S. We had nice coral and there were quite a few large hog fish. However, as we went S the coral became less interesting. If I were to dive hear again, I'd head N. On shore there's a fish camp with tons of lobster condos (traps) stacked up. That would explain the lack of lobster. There are lots of fishing boats working the reef, also explaining the lack of big fish.
Today we're headed towards the mainland and will end up at Cay Caulker. We should have a great sail with 15-20 kts from behind. Until the next report....
-- Geoff & Sue
For the cruiser: Waypoints to Rendezvous Point
17-32.400N 87-49.77W Reef Cut - 10+ feet of water
17-32.624N 87-49.52W Inside of reef
Log ID: 471
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