Sailing March 7-13

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We woke up early on the morning of the 7th and took a water taxi to the meeting point for our sailing trip into Belize on Las Sirenas, a 40-foot catamaran. There were three crew members that all spoke Spanish, two American couples and a Canadian father-daughter duo that sailed with us. We made our way down to Lake Izabal and laid anchor before the sun went down. The meals were excellent, considering the size of the kitchen and the constant rocking of the boat. At every meal there was amazing bread and peanut butter, that we ate if we still had room for more (and after a week on the boat we managed to go through 4 large jars of the peanut butter!) The next day at 6am, we made our way out from Rio Dulce snaking through the steep canyon walls towards Livingstone, the Afro-Caribbean town at the mouth of the river leading into the Ocean. While the crew looked after customs as we were entering Belize, we explored the town. Right by the ocean was Crocodile Park, where 4 full size crocodiles were on display in an open air tank. The weather was not so great, with intermittent rain and constant wind. The large, choppy waves made our stomachs drop. The motion sickness preventatives (a.k.a. Gravol) did not help the girls through the 7 hour journey, as they spent most of the time either sleeping or with heads in buckets. The boys on the other hand had a blast lying in the hammocks at the head of the boat, getting occasionally dunked.

By dinner time we anchored near a Belize eco reserve. We were in a coral field, with 4 or 5 islands in a chain past us. We anchored close to Nicolas Key, and swam ashore to explore the island full of abandoned and unfinished bungalows. There were tens of thousands of huge conch shells dumped on and around the island. The next day we didn’t sail anywhere. Ben and Dave fished off the back of the boat into perfectly clear, 6 foot water with bread as bait and caught several fish, including some needle fish, and one exoskeleton fish. There was, however a barracuda lurking around the catamaran, and on three or four occasions the fish that we had just hooked underwater would be intercepted by the barracuda in the blink of an eye. One fish actually saw the barracuda coming and buried itself in the sand before Ben yanked it out to its peril! In the afternoon we went snorkeling. The boys crossed a very shallow coral to get to another island. When we got to it, we checked out a flat shallow section of rocks teeming with life. We saw hundreds of starfish, urchins, and snails, not to mention a tiny octopus and three moray eels. The next day we went to another snorkeling spot where we saw cuttlefish(squid) and many other brightly coloured fish. We watched an octopus make its way along the sea floor. At the end of the day as we were getting back on the boat the crew were tossing the bones of the fish they speared earlier in the day and there was a large nurse shark right there below us. Almost everyone was nursing a sunburn that evening, and one jellyfish sting for Lindsay.

The next day we anchored in the center of a large ringed coral reef. The colours in the water there were amazing. We did more snorkeling, and the coral was the most impressive at this location. We stumbled across an absolutely gigantic stingray that was luckily stirring up a cloud of sand. When we got back the Captain, Raul, took Ben and Dave to watch him spearfish (for foreigners it’s illegal to spearfish) and it was amazing to watch him hunt the large red snappers, inside and under coral. For the third day in a row we were treated to fresh fish caught by the crew. The next day we sailed back to Livingstone, and caught large mackerel, and a couple barracudas trolling behind the boat. Everyone but the four of us opted out of the last day sailing from Livingstone back to Rio Dulce, so we had the boat to ourselves.

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