3/24 - Kryss, Tristan Hayman and I leave my Punta Gorda, Florida dock around 4:00 p.m. in light breezes and fair skies with the help of Dave and Betsy Jones. We motor to the mouth of Charlotte Harbor and throw the hook out for dinner and the rest of the night. Uneventful.
3/25 - We leave the anchorage around 9:00 a.m. under power for Ft. Meyers in light winds and moderate chop. We have to maneuver in and around a number of sailboats seemingly on the same course leaving the entrance channel and then turn South towards Ft. Meyers without incident. We then sail in moderate breezes to Ft. Meyers and arrive around 5:00 p.m. We had heavy local boat traffic in the channel to the anchorage area near Moss Marina between Estero and San Carlos Islands. We had hoped to fuel up at Moss Marina that afternoon but the fuel dock was occupied so we anchored nearby to leave for the fuel dock early the next morning.
3/26 - Fuel dock was empty at 8:00 a.m. when we tied up. Fueled up and left for Isla Mujeres in moderate breezes and seas. About 22 nm out Kryss was just not feeling comfortable with the motion of the boat and the prospect of her remaining three full days in that condition persuaded us that it would be wiser to return to Ft. Meyers where she could easily get back to Punta Gorda by car and fly to meet us when we got to Isla Mujeres. We turned around and had a very brisk sail back to Ft. Meyers as the wind picked up considerably in the afternoon. We anchored not far from where we were the night before, adjacent to a floating dock where we could “offload” Kryss the next morning. Dave Jones insisted on driving down to pick Kryss up.
3/27 - The next morning Tristan and I put the dinghy in the water, mounted the outboard, and around 1:00 p.m I dropped Kryss off at the floating dock where Dave was waiting for her. Tristan and I spent the rest of the day at anchor attending to chores and waiting for a morning departure for Isla Mujeres. The delay in departure resulted in some very strong winds being forecast for our intended path to Isla Mujeres in the next few days so we decided to take a small “detour” to the Dry Tortugas the next day while the weather would still be favorable to get on our way. Doing so would take us generally towards our destination of Isla Mujeres and the anchorage at Fort Jefferson would give us a safe place to ride out the strong weather that was predicted to begin on the 29th.
3/28- We set out in the morning for the Dry Tortugas in light winds and seas and motored to the Dry Tortugas, arriving at the Fort Jefferson anchorage around 9:00 a.m. the next morning.
3/29 - The wind picked up substantially after we arrived. We first anchored in about 30 ft. of water all the way into the harbor and I was enjoying the fact that it we had put out 135 ft. of chain after some difficulties with the chain getting stuck in the windlass when one of the Rangers hailed us on the VHF and told us that we had anchored outside of the anchorage area (it’s not marked anywhere and there were only three boats in the whole harbor) but nonetheless we were directed to move, which we did. As “luck” would have it, we were able to anchor safely in about 19 ft. of water (a lot better than 30ft. in a big blow). By the time we did the wind was really up and for the next few days it was blowing pretty good; so much so that we decided that it would not be a good idea to launch the dinghy from our foredeck.
3/30 and 3/31 - We stayed at anchor while the wind blew steadily in the mid to high 20's on the 30th, coming down to the 15's on the morning of the 31st. We looked at multiple weather options and elected to wait to leave on the 1st as the seas from the preceding days would not settle until then, even though that would probably mean that we would have to motor a good part of the way to Isla Mujeres. Leaving on the later date would also help assure good passage conditions in the Yucatan Channel which can be troublesome in strong conditions to say the least.
4/1 - Left the Fort Jefferson anchorage at 9:00 a.m. with winds around 12 knts. We’re finally really on our way to Isla Mujeres. A sailboat that came into the anchorage the night before (Free Bird) was from Punta Gorda. Small world. Moderate breeze at about 60 degrees put us on our course to Isla Mujeres with sails and engine. As the day progresses the wind dies and our course is more and more into the wind. Passed Havana around 3:00 p.m. Around 4:00 wind deserts us and is on our nose and we take in the jib. We continue to do about 5.9 knts. at 2,100 engine rpms with the main serving mainly as a “staysail”. Sunny with moderate swells. Tristan catches a very small Dorado on his hand line about 5:00 p.m. and releases it. The ocean is chocked full of Portuguese Man of war. One goes by every 15 seconds or so. The night passes uneventfully. Wind is light and at our back most of the night and we’re under power with reefed main snugged in tight.
4/2 - Wind has shifted to the Southeast so it’s on our nose more or less and we’re still powering with close hauled reefed main as the day begins, but we are making good time. We have averaged just a little under 6 knts. so far for the trip, which was our goal. Around 10:30 wind pipes up and moves to a “sailing direction”, so we pull out the jib, let the main out and we’re finally sailing again. In fact, after an hour or so we’re hard on the wind and it’s blowing pretty strongly so we reef the jib to make for a smoother motion, and also to slow us up so that we can be sure to get to Isla Mujeres in daylight. At the rapid speed we were sailing we were in danger of getting there in the night, which is certainly not desirable for an anchorage with which one is not familiar. Now it’s 1:30 p.m. and the winds are lessening and the wind direction is veering to a point where we will have to put the engine on again soon. “That’s cruising”. Engine it is, and later in the afternoon when we expected predicted light winds and seas it starts blowing pretty hard and the seas build to where it is mildly uncomfortable. So much for the weatherman. It’s the middle of the night now and conditions have subsided.
4/3 - We’ll make Isla Mujeres this afternoon. Winds continue to be a little stronger than expected at 15 to 19 knts. and more on our nose than expected so we motor sail all day to Isla Mujeres. Wow, Isla Mujeres is a combination of Coney Island, Atlantic City and St. Johns BVI. It’s Sunday and the harbor is absolutely packed with captained charter catamarans ferrying revelers around and all kinds of private vessels. We anchor around 4:30 p.m. local time (Isla Mujeres is an hour earlier than PGI), and our first visitor is Frazier from s/v Gypsy Moth, also a Gulfstar CSY 50. Turns out he’s from South Africa like Tristan and apparently he and his wife are here long term. We find that we’ve lost a retaining pin on one of the supports for the wind generator (an easy fix) and that our dinghy outboard gas tank is leaking (it’s only a year old, but clearly needs to be replaced). We have robust phone and internet service, so we’re back in civilization for a while. Kryss is scheduled to fly in on Wednesday the 6th.
4/4 - We move from the “outside” anchorage to Puerto Isla Mujeres Marina, which is in the back bay part of the harbor. It’s associated with a Wyndham Resort and has extensive grounds (incl. tennis courts) and a very large shallow pool with swim up bar. There is supposed to be a restaurant, but the only food available is bar food.
4/5-4/17 - Kryss arrives on the 6th without incident and we spend two weeks at the marina catching our breath, completing the Mexico cruising check-in process which is arduous, exploring the Island in a golf cart, and doing boat chores, laundry, etc. Tristan, who was NAUI certified as a scuba diver a long time ago and cannot find his certification card takes a new PADI certification course. There’s a very large supermarket and general goods store an easy walk from the marina where we buy high-end tequila at reasonable prices, fresh vegetables and bakery, and on the 11th Kryss and I walk a short distance to Tito’s Empanadas where we buy 18 of these terrific beef, chicken and pork empanadas with “slaw” and hot sauce for $20. Now we have an alternative for lunch beyond dinner leftovers and cheese and cold cut sandwiches. Tristan and I buy a replacement auxiliary gas tank for the Yamaha dinghy outboard and have the outboard serviced, as it was experiencing carburetor problems. Kryss and I plan to take a dive boat to the “sleeping shark caves” near Contoy Island. This is a very well-known location due to the “phenomenon” of the “sleeping” sharks, which otherwise usually need to keep swimming to move water over their gills but remain immobile in limestone caves at Contoy Island. As it turns out it is a long trip to the Island; the surrounding water has been and is expected to remain quite rough; and we learn that the only sharks to be seen there now are nurse sharks which Kryss and I have already seen in multitude before and which tend to generally be in “immobile” mode for long periods of time so seeing them would be nothing new for us. We are told that whatever the phenomenon was that made these caves famous years ago for their population of pelagic “sleeping sharks”, it is no longer present and so we cancel the dive. We spend many hours lazing around at the pool in the afternoons. On Easter Sunday Kryss and I go to the Garaffon Water Park, which is a very large and well run facility at the South end of the Island with a reef (albeit very shallow and small) to snorkel, pools, short zip lines, a restaurant, kayaks, etc. For a single price you get to use all of the facilities and with drinks and lunch included. It’s pretty crowded that day but there is a very large staff and they handle the crowd (almost exclusively Mexicans and largely families) very well. The snorkeling is disappointing to say the least. Even though we had wetsuits they made us wear life vests, the reef is tiny and roped off, and the crowds are ridiculous. If we had known it would be like that we would not have come, but it was good to get into the salt water, lunch was excellent, and over all it was a nice day away from the marina.
4/18-4/24 - We leave the slip at the marina at about 6:45 a.m. on the 18th to sail to Aventuras Marina (about 50 nm away), which is on the mainland opposite the South end of Cozumel. It’s sunny and the wind is light and seas are calm. We expect to experience strong 2-3 knt. countercurrent on our way to Aventuras and are pleasantly surprised that for the first almost half of the trip there is little or no current. When it does finally “take us” it cuts our speed from 7 knts. to 4 knts. or under, but we find that if we really hug the mainland shore we can at significantly reduce its affect on us. Around midday the wind starts to pipe up, which is good because it is predominately from the Northeast, taking us in the direction we want to go. As it is pretty much behind us we can motorsail and the swells are in the direction of our travel. We had planned to sail to and spend at least a week in Cozumel, but it turns our that recent hurricanes have caused a lot of damage to Cozumel’s marinas, and in any event they do not have adequate depth for our 6 ft. draft, which means we would have had to anchor out in the open roadstead of the main town, San Miguel, where we would have been subject to sea swells as well as the wakes of numerous ferry’s, dive boat, cruise ships, etc. You can no longer anchor overnight in the underwater preserve as a conservation measure. For those reasons it just didn’t make sense to overnight there, even though that had been the plan all along. Aventuras Marina is a huge complex that is part of an even larger residential condominium complex and seemed like the best alternative to continue our way towards Belize. We arrive at Aventuras (which has a pretty tricky entrance) in good light and moderate conditions at about 5:30 p.m. and tie up along the seawall just inside the entrance. Gerardo, who runs the marina and who I have been in touch with for the past few days by phone, is right there with an assistant to give us a hand, and even though the seawall is concrete with no pilings, with fenders out we come in against the wind and cozy up to it without incident, tied up right behind “Deja Vu”, an Amel 53 that had been in a slip opposite to us at Puerto Isla Mujeres for the last two weeks. The marina is huge, and chocked full of day-sail catamarans and large recreational fishing boats that go out and return multiple times a day. There are many “bays” to the marina and it is built around a central compound of pens for trained dolphins that people can swim with, and even a trained sea lion and a manatee (not trained). Around the pens are many, many, casual outdoor restaurants, pharmacies, and some dive shops, etc. Watching the tourists being propelled around the pens by the dolphins pushing them, or by their being pulled around by the dolphins after they have grabbed on to their dorsal fins is quite entertaining, although you have to feel sorry for the fact that the dolphins are penned and unable to swim freely in the sea. We dive a local 60 ft. deep reef just to get back in the water (pretty boring, but a good introduction to our new BCD’s and my new mask), and Kryss learns that it’s time to upgrade her mask, which she does after the dive. We also dive the local cenote (limestone cave) a few days later. The dive is mildly interesting, but no great shakes. The best thing for me was that I expected to be very cold since the dive is in fresh water sourced from underground springs and sunlight doesn’t really reach them causing the water temperature to be about 76 degrees rather than the 81 or 82 in the ocean; nonetheless I was less cold than on the ocean dive so I was pleased and frankly relieved. I do not fare well in cold water. We had planned to fuel up early in the morning of Sunday the 24th before sailing to South to Bahia Ascension, a reef-protected shallow bay on the mainland about 45 nm away, but on Saturday we learned that the marina was out of diesel. Since we had pretty much done all that we wished to do in Aventuras by then we decided to leave early Sunday without the fuel and to take on fuel in Belize. We have a quite brisk sail to Bahia Ascension, which is very large and well protected series of bays, but pretty much devoid of any civilization even though it was purported to have a huge lobstering business with a large commercial lobster processing plant just around from a settlement named Punta Allen. When we do get there we find that there is not enough depth for us to tuck into the anchorage that we had planned on and it is a little bumpy further out, so we move to a different anchorage and finally “throw the hook out” at about 3:30 p.m. We had planned to sail directly from there the next day to San Pedro, Belize on Ambergis Cay, but decided to shorten that overnight sail by next sailing to Bahia Spiritu Santo, another large reef-protected bay on the mainland between Bahia Ascension and San Pedro.
4/25 - We leave around 9:30 a.m. and have a pleasant sail to Bahia Spiritu Santo. We get to the cut through the reef at about 1:30 and it takes about an hour and a half to get to the planned anchorage behind Isla Chal. It’s totally secluded and quite pretty, but although the water is the usual turquoise, it’s not as clear as we are used to. We anchor in about 13 ft. with no swells but lots of breeze and are visited repeatedly by a pod of dolphins. On our way in we found that there is a relatively short stretch between the entrance through the reef and the anchorage that has significantly more shallow depths than are shown on the chart. We flirted with depths in the low 6's and even touched bottom one time before we passed through it and arrived at the anchorage. That was not expected and not at all fun. The good news is that it’s all sand, so bouncing on the bottom (as long as it’s only light contact) isn’t the worst thing. As I write this I am not at all looking forward to transiting that stretch on our way out of the Bay.
4/26 - We had planned to leave for Belize today but decide to hang out for the day and leave for Belize tomorrow instead. Tristan and I tighten the steering cables; I put on snorkel gear to look at the prop as we felt a vibration that we thought could signal having picked up some kind of line on it in the ocean but it’s clear. Tristan installs two latches on cabinets that have been opening of their own accord when we are underway and we otherwise pretty much “laze around” for the day. Dolphins continue to visit on a regular basis.
4/27 - First real cloudy day. We wait around until 2:00pm to leave to catch a rising tide. We get through the stretch that was so shallow on the way in and just when I think that we’ve made it through to the reef exit without grounding we not only touch bottom but we are hard aground. We try to power our way through to no avail. Tristan thinks we should try to back into the deeper water that we had before going aground, but that wasn’t much and I see no clear way through the shallows we are in (we’re right on the chart’s “magenta line”) to any deeper water so I’m not in favor of backing up, although I do give it a half-hearted try for a little while. We’re stuck hard for about 20 minutes but it feels like 20 hours. Wind comes up and there’s quite a bit of chop, so it must be really shallow where we are right now for us not to just “bounce” into deeper water. Tide is rising according to our calculations from tide tables for Isla Mujeres and Belize City (none for where we are), so I’m resigned to waiting it out a bit. Tristan suggests putting up more main sail (we’re double reefed) and I agree. He does that and between the increased power of the larger main and the heeling effect it affords us together with the incoming tide we are off the ground and back on our way out of the harbor. Big sighs of relief all around. From here it’s a straight course along the coast overnight to San Pedro, Belize. The winds are moderate from our aft quarter although the seas are kind of lumpy and we are motor sailing at 1,800-2,000 rpm at over 5 knts. There is supposed to be a strong counter current of almost 2 knts. offshore so we stay within a mile or so of shore and are pleasantly surprised not to find any counter current.
4/28 - We motor sail overnight in moderate conditions making better than expected speed and arrive at the entrance between the reefs to San Pedro, Belize at about 8:00 a.m. local time. Belize is an hour earlier than Mexico. There is a large yellow buoy in the center of the narrow cut between the reefs marking the channel and using the entrance coordinates from the Cruising Guide and the yellow buoy we enter the harbor without difficulty. As we are becoming accustomed to, there are only limited areas in the harbor that provide us with a minimum of 7 ft. depth, but using the Cruising Guide we find a suitable place to anchor more or less midway between San Pedro and the reef. The wind is down and despite multiple efforts, we can’t get our heavy Manson claw anchor to set in the bottom, even though it’s sand. We want to try the secondary anchor, which is a Danforth, but it turns out that we don’t have a spare anchor swivel for the Danforth and we are unable to disassemble the swivel from the Manson, so we try again to set the Manson. We snorkel over to it thinking that perhaps we can help set it by hand, but at 80 lbs. that’s not going to happen. This last time one of the flukes seems to have embedded itself in the bottom and since there is little wind we resign ourselves to monitoring how it is holding in the hopes that the embedded fluke will dig the rest of the anchor in when there is more pull on the rode. Yes, we could have powered back on the anchor to try to set it but the 7 ft. patch was small (shallower around it) and we had so much difficulty in getting the anchor to dig in at all that I didn’t want to risk pulling it out of its tenuous grip. I preferred to hope that under light load it would continue to dig in better. I’m pretty tired from the strain of being aground the day before and then making the overnight passage, but around 2:00 we put the dinghy in the water, put the engine on the dinghy (lo and behold it starts right up for a change) and I dinghy in to Town to check in with Customs and Immigration while Kryss and Tristan stay with the boat. I land the dinghy at the fuel dock at the North end of Town (a) to talk to the people at the fuel dock to see if there is adequate depth at the end of the dock for us to access it for fuel, which doesn’t seem to be the case, and (b) believing from the “map” in the Cruising Guide that Customs and Immigration is located there. Unfortunately it turns out that Customs and Immigration is located at the other end of Town, pretty much directly across the anchorage from where Duet is anchored, so I have to walk the entire length of the Town to get to Customs and Immigration. San Pedro is basically comprised of one main street (Front Street). It’s lined with wall to wall small restaurants, tourist shops and pharmacies. There’s a public beach and a Town park right along the shore and everyone seems quite friendly. Golf carts are the means of travel when not walking. Customs and Immigration is on the second story of a nondescript building around the corner from the Tropic Air plane terminal. It’s hot as hell with little or no breeze and there’s a line outside of the Immigration office, but I am assured that the line moves along quickly. The Customs, Immigration, Agriculture, and Public Health offices are all in the same place and I have to deal with about 5 different people, each of whom wants fees for something, but a couple of hours later and a couple of hundred dollars lighter we’re all checked in except for the fact that the fees were so substantial that I didn’t have enough cash to pay the balance (no credit cards taken). Of course that’s no problem to these entrepreneurial officials, they give me a ride in their golf cart back to where my dinghy is and they wait patiently for me to dinghy back to the boat, get more cash and pay them at the wharf, at which time I get my clearance papers. But of course that’s not quite the end. Now I have to download an app to apply for and pay for mandatory Covid/health insurance for all on the boat while that official sits not so patiently next to me at a small table on the wharf while I apply and pay for the coverage. It’s about 5:30 p.m. when I’m finally done and dinghy back to the boat for dinner and a much welcome rest. Unfortunately that was not to be either. The generator begins to overheat shortly after I turn it on to get ready for dinner and Tristan troubleshoots it, finding “gobs” of seaweed in the cooling water basket strainer and a core of seaweed blocking the inlet hose. We have been seeing a great deal of Sargassum floating in the water almost from the time that we began the trip, but it has gotten progressively worse, and now apparently it has “caught up with us”. When it’s all cleared the generator runs again at proper temperature and we hope that the problem is solved, although Tristan suggests changing out the strainer itself for a new one since the top of the old one is fractured and therefor it doesn’t seat correctly in the bottle assembly.
4/29-The day begins a little overcast, but that dissipates early on and it’s another day of bright sun and moderate breezes, although the wind is picking up. Kryss and Tristan dinghy into Town for the day while I do some legal work, catch up on e-mails in general and try to figure out where we can stop at a dock with enough depth to get fuel. I had planned to stop at Cay Chapel about 12 nm further South but it doesn’t appear that the facility there is open at present. I also spend some time going through our stores and resupplying our shelves from them and replacing the generator strainer basket. By 3:00 p.m. I am ready for a much needed nap. Kryss and Tristan get back to the boat from Town at about 4:30 and report what they learned about fuel availability, local diving, and the other concerns we have. They had a nice lunch, spoke with a number of friendly and helpful residents, visited Ramon’s Resort (it’s on the shore just opposite where we are anchored) and they found it very attractive and well-maintained. The generator overheats again and Tristan repeats the procedures to clear seaweed from it, this time finding the hose almost plugged with seaweed closer to the sea water inlet. When cleared the generator again runs at proper temperature and we can cook, charge our devices, and have a nice dinner while the wind picks up and blows pretty strongly all night.
4/30-The generator has become the bane of our existence. It runs hot again this morning and again Tristan has to clear seaweed from the system, this time finding some cardboard as well as seaweed clogging the inlet hose. He also uses a long handled screw driver to attempt to clear the system at the base of the thruhull. It seems likely that the cardboard was the culprit this time, and once cleared the generator is running properly and we’re charging our batteries. The anchorage is totally chocked full of Sargassum, so it will not be a surprise if we encounter the problem again. This morning he also checked the engine raw water strainer and the water maker raw water strainer. The engine strainer had a lot of Sargassum, but the water maker inlet had none-go figure! It turns out that we cannot reliably confirm that there is adequate water depth to fuel up at the fuel dock in San Pedro and it seems very questionable as to whether the marina at Cay Chapel is functional, so Tristan and I dinghy to Captain Shark’s, the marine supply store near Ramon’s Resort to see if we can buy an additional diesel “can” to use to bring some fuel to the boat in the dinghy. We find a very well-stocked and organized marine supply store and are able to buy an additional diesel can. We then dinghy to the other end of Town to fill the two cans and bring them back to the boat. The process goes smoothly, with Tristan doing all of the “heavy-lifting”, and we decide to return to the fuel dock to get another 10 gallons. The price of the fuel with the 3% credit card surcharge and taxes etc. is $8 American per gallon, which is certainly the most expensive fuel by far that I’ve ever purchased. Nonetheless I am pleased that we have been able to add 25 gallons to our main tank.
5/1-It continues to be pretty blustery and visibly quite rough outside the reef (sometimes pretty “bumpy” inside the reef too from all of the water taxi and dive boat traffic), and none of us is anxious to get onto a dive boat. We dinghy into Ramon’s for lunch. Lunch is in a lovely location but nothing special in terms of the food, and after lunch Kryss and I take a walk through Town again, including a detour to the large lagoon on the other side of the Island (only accessible by shallow draft boat), while Tristan relaxes on Ramon’s beach. We return to the boat for the rest of the day and make preparation for transiting to Cay Caulker early the next morning.
5/2-We get up early to catch a rising tide and we set off with some trepidation about whether to trust our Navionics chartplotter software or the courses set out in our Cruising Guide for the approximately 11 nm passage to Cay Caulker (they’re somewhat different from each other). We are motoring carefully, intent on staying in the deepest water, but making over 5 knts. and midway through the passage it appears pretty clear that we can generally rely on the Navionics information. We motor into the anchorage without incident after less than 3 hours and anchor in approx. 10 feet of water with plenty of swinging room. Since we are in a bight in the lee of Cay Caulker Island(s) we get the fresh breezes from the ocean but no swells. It’s a very good anchorage for us. There’s a dinghy dock not far from where we are anchored. The island is very small, actually two islands divided by a small “cut” about 70 yards or so across. There’s a little pontoon boat that serves as a people ferry between the two islands. We are anchored in the lee of the larger and more developed of the two islands. Neither is much more than 150 yards wide, if that. The island we are behind is quite developed in an undeveloped kind of way and very quaint, with dirt streets, an infinite number of small restaurants with interesting, wholesome (to one degree or another) varied and inexpensive food. There are also a number of small supermarkets and specialty food stores, pharmacies, hardware stores and a bakery, all within a short walk from the dinghy dock. The island gets its electricity from a large generator complex near the dinghy dock, but we are far enough away from it that it is not a noise problem. On the other side of the island from our anchorage (the East side) is the Caribbean Sea and the fringing reef that began in San Pedro and continues down the whole island chain of which Cay Caulker is a part to separate the ocean side of the islands from the Sea itself, giving them protection from the ocean swells. There are a number of dive shops and ferries to Belize City, San Pedro and elsewhere, and at the North end of the Southerly of the two islands (the one we are anchored behind) there is a large amusement area where they have a volley ball net set up, a large raised restaurant, a ground level bar with lots of outdoor seating, and a swimming area created in the cut, but separated from it by two concrete “piers” projecting into the cut so as to keep the flow of current through the cut out of the swimming area. There are lots of tourists there as well as lots of locals with their kids. It’s very, very laid back and I like it a lot. People are friendly and helpful.
5/3-6 - In the middle of the night of May 3 I wake up to multiple alarms coming from our navigational instruments and after turning them off and going back to sleep, we wake up to an electronics “nightmare”. Our external GPS (not the one built into our chart plotter), our AIS, our wind instrument “repeater” and our autopilot have all ceased functioning and try as we might, be are unable to bring them back to life. For the next three days (May 3, 4, and 5) Tristan and I spend innumerable hours each day on the phone with technical representatives from Raymarine (unfortunately a different one each time), who walk us through troubleshooting our electronics system. Each time we get a new tech it seems like we start from scratch and after a while it’s very circular, frustrating, and much like the definition of insanity, performing the same function repeatedly and expecting a different result each time. Raymarine’s 800 number informs me that it is not free for calls made outside of the United States and I spend hours and hours and hours, either on hold or on these calls with the tech. Lord only knows what my phone bill is going to look like. By Noon on the third day of this pattern (May 5) our tech for the day is out of ideas and has to leave our call to return to the tech pool fielding other calls. At my request, he promises to call back at the end of the day, but as with a number of the other techs, he fails to do so. Towards the end of the call we ascertain that the stand alone GPS receiver is showing fault status, which is very likely the culprit for all of our problems because (1) it is the data source for our autopilot and (2) it is part of the NMEA 2000 data backbone system that drives all of our navigational devices, which will not work if any one of the devices on the system has failed. At this point, Tristan and I get into the lazarette to determine where that GPS antenna cable travels through the boat and lo and behold, the seeming cause of all of the problems is staring us in the face. There is a three way NMEA 2000 “junction” connection in the corner of the lazarette directly under the GPS antenna. The GPS antenna is plugged into the center of it, and from that junction, there are two NMEA 2000 data cables, one running directly to my autopilot and one to the helm, probably to the autopilot control module mounted there. One of the two NMEA cable connections is so badly corroded that it cannot possibly be functional, and the GPS antenna plug into the junction is badly damaged as well. Not to belabor the subject too much, we conclude that it is very likely that the NMEA 2000 cable is compromised and that the GPS antenna is not working, either because it has itself failed or because its plug into the NMEA 2000 backbone junction has failed. We do get a recommendation from the local marine supply shop for a local technician who is capable of splicing new connection ends onto the GPS and NMEA 2000 cables and we also source a new GPS antenna and new NMEA 2000 cable in case splicing doesn’t work. We arrange for the tech to come to the boat and we order the new parts, which will take a week to arrive and at a cost double what it should be, but “that’s cruising”. The next day the tech comes, does an admirable job of solder splicing new connections, but since we didn’t have the correct cable or cable terminal to replace the damaged GPS ones, the effort fails. The newly spliced “jury rig” 6 inch piece loses 2 volts over 6 inches of cable and it’s very clear that the antenna is not getting sufficient voltage to function. We still can’t tell whether it’s the low voltage or a faulty antenna, but the result is the same; and we can’t effectuate the repair that we hope will work until we can get the new antenna and antenna cable and the new NMEA 2000 cable next week. Tristan has worked like a dog with me since the problem arose and we never would have gotten to this point of at least having a suitable plan to fix the problem without him. 5/7 - The day begins like most of the rest with bright sunny skies and this morning lower winds; it’s Saturday and a day to take off from our electronics trouble shooting and “smell the roses”. Kryss has had it with our sitting around so she arranges to fly home on Monday. Definitely understandable under the circumstances. The way I feel, if I could have the boat teleported back to Punta Gorda, I’d fly home too.
5/8 - It’s Mother’s Day! Hmmmn. Another bright sunny day with light winds and Kryss and I take a long dinghy ride on the ocean side of the Island but inside the reef as far as the cut between Cay Caulker and Cay Chapel, the next island to the South. Tristan relaxes at the “hot spot” at the North end of the island.
5/9 - Well, it’s a day of reckoning of sorts. I dinghy Kryss to shore so she can take a taxi to the airport and then Tristan and I work to “jury rig” a direct connection between the autopilot and the autopilot’s control head at the helm to bypass the faulty NMEA 2000 cable and junction with the seemingly faulty GPS unit. SUCCESS! When the autopilot is connected directly to the autopilot’s control head the head is actuated and we can again initialize and use the autopilot if we choose to. Our other navigation instruments are generally working again as well since we have switched the plotter from the external GPS antenna to its internal one, with one relatively minor exception. This gives us reasonable confidence that when the new NMEA 2000 cable and new GPS antenna arrive and are hooked up that we will again have a working autopilot at least. The one anomaly is that our AIS receiver seems to work only intermittently, and we don’t really have any reasonable idea of why. We’ll try to trace its cable tomorrow and check that cable’s connections. We also find that a key house battery bank cable was never reconnected when the house batteries were replaced, leaving us essentially with a bank of two 12v batteries, rather than three 12v batteries, and explaining why we have had such poor reserve battery capacity. With a bunch of tinkering and adapting we re-attach the cable and are hopeful that the problem is solved. Kryss arrives safely back in Punta Gorda.
5/10 - Another sunny day with increased winds. The nav instruments are still functioning (with the limited exception noted above), and the batteries are once again showing the voltage I would expect in the morning, so all’s right with the world.
5/12 - For the last week or so we have been speaking with everyone who will talk to us about whether there is enough water at the fuel dock for us to bring Duet alongside and take on fuel. We are consistently told that there is enough water as long as we use the North side outer dock. We have ascertained what hours the fuel dock is open, listened to multiple explanations about staying in the “dark” water on our way in and when approaching the dock directly from where we are anchored, first having to turn to port to get between two sand bars and then to starboard to stay in the dark water by the dock. We have also seen that the dock we would have to use is much shorter than Duet and that given the limited length of the pump hoses, I would have to swing Duet around just in front of the dock to present our port side to the dock, which is the side our fuel fill is on. We have watched a multitude of small tugs with barges which load cargo just to the North of the fuel dock enter and leave the area of the fuel dock and we have planned to follow their path after we get our new nav parts and install them. Over the same period of time we have also discussed the fact that if we did not trust that we could access the fuel dock with Duet, we could ferry diesel to Duet in our two 5 gallon cans with our dinghy. Since we are down to about a quarter of a tank, that would mean about twelve trips to bring on the approx. 120 gallons necessary to top off our tank. I have been thinking about this pretty much non-stop for the same week, petrified of going aground in front of the fuel dock with no appreciable tide available to float us off, no maneuvering room and no Sea Tow to pull us off. I wake up at 4:00 a.m. knowing that I have been fooling myself into thinking that going to the fuel dock is the correct decision, and now certain that it is just not worth what I think is the considerable risk of going aground there to do that, rather than dealing with the labor of ferrying fuel out to Duet at anchor. Of course now it’s 5 days later, so instead of having five days to more or less comfortably do the ferrying a few times a day over the five days, we’d have to do it over three or maybe even just two days. Anyway, I’m kicking myself, but I have finally decided that going to the fuel dock is just not something I’m prepared to risk. At 7 a.m. I call Omar (the fellow at the marine supply store who has been so helpful) and I ask him whether he knows anyone who would be willing to ferry the fuel out to us. He calls back in about a half hour saying his cousin Andy will be out to our boat shortly to do that. Andy is a local fisherman and comes out in his fishing panga with his helper Fernando. Fernando is a character. He lives on the mainland and is a wood carver, and can’t stop talking and making jokes, often of a sexual nature. Anyway, I agree on a price with Andy and I go to the fuel dock with the panga and our two 5 gallon diesel can to start the process. When we get there Andy says he has two empty 16 gallon diesel containers nearby at his home and asks Fernando to retrieve them. One is empty and dry, but the other has considerable moisture in it, and I explain to Andy that I will not take the risk of putting fuel that can be contaminated with moisture into the wet container. He accedes immediately and he starts to ferry the fuel using our two 5 gallon cans and the one dry 16 gallon container. Tristan does yeoman service manhandling the diesel containers onto the boat from the panga and getting the fuel into our tank. We have a siphon that allows for the transfer of fuel from the 16 gallon container, but we (Tristan actually) has to use the spouts of the 5 gallon cans to empty them into the tank. It goes pretty quickly, and in I think less than two hours we have taken on 125 gallons of fuel safely, filling our tank. I am greatly relieved that we did not have to attempt to get to the fuel dock and that we were able to find someone to assist us rather than our having to make twelve trips ourselves. Now it’s just about waiting for the replacement GPS and NMEA 2000 cable and hooking them up before we can leave for Turneffe and Lighthouse Reef atolls. 5/13-14 - Arrival of parts is delayed. They won’t be here until Monday, which is a shame for two reasons. One because we have two more “down days” when we can’t do anything much or go anywhere, and two because the winds are down now and it would be cool to be at the atolls when it’s almost dead calm. Oh well, I guess “that’s cruising”. Friday evening we eat dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant suggested by Tristan named Il Pelicano. Unlike most of the other restaurants it is on the bay side of the island rather than the ocean side. It is screened from everything around it by shrubs and the dining area is raised, rendering it attractive and very welcoming. There was a singing guitar play who wasn’t half bad and the food was very good, and quite authentic. It was very different from any of the other restaurants that we had eaten in which generally featured “island” food, although other cuisines were available to some extent.
5/15 - Well, it seems like luck is not with us this trip. The wind is predicted to pick up big time and really howl Thursday through next Tuesday at least, which makes going to Turneffe and Lighthouse untenable. Their anchorages are not sufficiently protected and the seas will be high even after the winds abate, making our return to San Pedro to check out problematical. At least Tristan is of the same mind with me about this, so there’s no stress between us on that accord. We’ll just have to stay in the harbor at Cay Caulker where we have a well protected safe anchorage with good holding and just ride out the weather. As it is, we’ll put out some more scope, just to be doubly sure, and we’re talking about some “elective” boat projects that will keep up busy for a while. We’ll also explore the Northern smaller island of Cay Caulker. Just no choice. Going to the “out islands” would not be wise to say the least.
5/16 - The parts arrive at Cay Caulker at the very end of the day, so it’s not until the next day that we can pick them up and install them. We’ve picked up three large yellow peppers and I’ve bought another pound of ground lamb, so I make lamb stuffed peppers again and they come out really well.
5/17 - We wake up to no wind at all-the first time since we left Florida, and I pick up the parts when the marine supply store opens at 8:00. By Noon we have installed the new GPS and the new NMEA 2000 cable and the system is up and running. Disappointingly we were unable to “thread” the new cable from the engine room up through the stainless steel tubes to the Nav Pods, so we had to drill a hole in the back of the Nav Pod where it had to enter and run the cable from under the aft bunk, along the ceiling of the aft cabin, and along the floor of the cockpit and then externally along the stainless tubes carrying the other cables. We’re of course delighted that all of our electronics are back up and running, but not being able to make the repair permanently in the proper manner puts a damper on it, at least for me, and I think for Tristan too. Anyway, we leave the instruments on for the day and the night and they continue to function as they should, so we are pretty confident that we have “fixed” the problem.
5/18 - It seems that we just can’t win. By now it is Tuesday the 18th and we have to get our Zarpe by the following Wednesday in San Pedro or pay for another month of access to Belize waters, leaving scant time to go to Turneffe and Lighthouse Reef atolls before having to come back to San Pedro to check out of Belize with Immigration. To make matters worse, when we look at the weather we see that the mild conditions that we have been experiencing and which would have been perfect for going to the atolls for snorkeling and diving there are about to change drastically. By Wednesday/Thursday of this week the winds and seas are going to increase appreciably and by the weekend we’re going to have very strong conditions right through until the 28th, the day we are supposed to leave for Florida. The anchorages at Turneffe and Lighthouse where we would have sailed to are small, generally fair weather anchorages (the atolls are over 20 nm offshore), and even if they would protect us in the conditions that are predicted, we would not be able to dive and snorkel the outsides of the reefs in those conditions as planned, so we reluctantly resign ourselves to remaining at anchor in Cay Caulker until it’s time to leave to return to Florida. Cay Caulker is nice and provides us with all that we need in basic amenities, but we’ve been here too long already and there will be little to do when the wind picks up. By the time it arrives we’re pretty much bored to tears, just happy that at least we have a solid safe anchorage to ride out the heavy weather and that we can go to shore to buy groceries and go out to eat when we want.
5/19 - Both Tristan and I put on our dive masks to try to inspect our anchor before the bigger winds come, but neither of us can find it. We trace the chain from the bow to where it disappears into the sand of the anchorage. We both think that we have seen where the anchor is and that it is buried under the sand, but we can’t actually see it or how it is oriented to the bottom. There’s nothing further to do but to let out some more scope and hope that since it has held us here nicely for over a week of sometimes not inconsiderable winds it is deeply enough buried to hold us in a bigger blow to come, and that since the stronger winds will come gradually, they will just cause the anchor to bury even deeper. The wind picks up just as predicted and really starts to howl by Friday, so we’re “stuck” as expected. We try to make the best of it, spending a fun afternoon ashore on the 19th eating lunch at Northside, a very attractive small resort on the North side of the cut between the two islands of Cay Caulker and then walking the length of the North Island to visit the two isolated resorts along it’s East shore, La Ben and Blue Zen. It’s a long hot walk along a dusty dirt road with hardly anything to see along the way, but the resorts are interesting in their own way and lunch at Northside (with an unexpectedly large pitcher of red sangria) was fun.
5/20 - Tristan takes the dinghy to shore but I’m a little out of sorts about our predicament and more than a little worried about our anchor holding in these strong conditions, so I stay on the boat, reading, cooking and writing this trip log. Nothing much going on as we are “killing time” waiting for this extended front to pass by so that we can start home.
5/21-22 - We both stay on the boat as the winds are really piping up. The night of the 22nd they positively howl in the middle of the night as a squall hits and drops a ton of rain on us. It really does sound like a freight train is passing through the boat. All in all the boat is pretty dry, although Tristan does have a small leak from the hatch over his bunk, which is of course a bummer.
5/23 - Winds drop later in the morning and it’s down right “balmy” until another big squall hits us and the gusts hit over 38 knts. It seems like it’s going to be like this most of the day, so I think my plan to go ashore and do a little shopping will have to be on hold. I’m also revisiting the plan to exit the reef back at San Pedro where we came in. The entrance/exit is tricky in that the leg inside the reef to the cut has some shallow areas that I don’t fully trust, and the Cruising Guide says not to try to enter or leave in “raging” seas. At this point, even through it will take up almost 20 nm out of our way to go there and back, I conclude that we should exit the reef South of Cay Caulker through Long Cay Pass. The trip there from here doesn’t involve traveling through potentially too shallow water and the Pass seems wide enough and straight forward enough to be passable even in somewhat rough weather. I plot that course and we plan for a Friday departure.
5/24-26 - Winds are still quite strong but are diminishing, and it appears that Friday the 27th is the right day to depart. We tend to readying the boat for the trip back to Florida, do some more provisioning for the trip and generally “hang out” waiting for the departure date. On the 25th we take the ferry to San Pedro to check out with Customs and Immigration and get our Zarpe (Port Captain clearance to depart). It takes a while. Customs doesn’t show up until 1:00 p.m. but finally we’re cleared and have our Zarpe and will take the ferry back to Caye Caulker to begin our sail back to Florida tomorrow.
5/27 - As forecast, winds are finally light and we motor the 10 miles or so to Long Cay Pass which turns out to be a wide and deep exit channel back into the Caribbean. There’s a guy free diving in an all black wet suit and hood almost right in our path and the panga that is accompanying him hurries over to warn us of his presence. We do see and avoid him and are on our way home. Winds are moderate and reasonably favorable and we make good time.
5/28 - When dawn breaks we are just about at the latitude of Bahia Ascension Mexico, where we stayed overnight on our way down to Belize, and we continue to have favorable current and reasonably favorable winds although they veer too much on our nose at times as we continue North. By the end of the day we are almost at Isla Mujeres. 5/29-31 - Conditions continue to be reasonably favorable but we are required to motor sail due to the wind direction. We generally make good time, although once back in the Gulf of Mexico we don’t choose what in retrospect was probably the best course to take advantage of the northward flowing portion of the Gulf Stream and avoid the southward flowing portion. We get into Charlotte Harbor at midday on the 31st, too late to transit the entrance to the Punta Gorda Isles canal system at near high tide, so we plan to anchor nearby at a little bight near the mouth of Alligator Creek to get into the Canal system tomorrow at the right time. The weather is beautiful when we enter Charlotte Harbor but dark clouds begin to form over Punta Gorda as we continue the 20 miles up the Harbor channel towards Alligator Creek and at around 5:00 p.m. while not yet at our destination we are blasted with a major thunderstorm carrying winds that gust to over 41 mph and dump tons of rain on us, not to mention much too much lightening too near for comfort. Radar shows us that the storm is huge and all around us and that there is nothing that we can do but hunker down and keep on proceeding slowly towards where we wish to anchor for the evening. Finally the storm subsides but radar shows a huge system all around us and that we are in the “eye”. We get to the place we wish to anchor and put out a lot of scope in anticipation of the “back side” of the storm hitting us as it leaves the area but it soon dissipates, and at 9:00 p.m. or so it’s time for evening cocktails. We eat dinner around 10:30 p.m. to a perfectly calm night. 6/1 - We plan to enter the entrance to the Canal system an hour or so before high tide, but it turns out that thunderstorms for today are predicted to begin much earlier than usual, so we try to balance the need for water under our keel and being at the dock before any thunderstorms arrive and leave for the entrance significantly earlier than ideal. All goes well and we’re tied up at my dock around 1:30 p.m. All in all the trip is a mixed bag. We get to Isla Mujeres and Belize, but not Cozumel. We have generally good weather, but don’t do anywhere near the amount of diving and snorkeling that we were hoping for. We stay safe and well and have a number of fun days but we also have a lot of “down time” and aggravation. I guess “that’s cruising”.
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