Pirate waters...

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After an incredible few days in the Belize interior we raced back to the coast to link up with a sailing charter heading south. The 46ft ketch Raga Queen would be home and transport for the next three days, along with an eclectic group including two couples from the UK about our age and a handful more from the US and Canada a little older.
Belize, at this time of year, may well be the perfect sailing destination. For three days we sailed under cloudless skies, pushed south by a constant 10 to 15 knots of north-east wind. We sailed inside the reef which runs along the entire coastline and so had perfectly flat water. Every two hours or so we would stop for some snorkelling or something eat, or to perhaps pull in a fish. We camped the first night on a tiny coral caye and drank rum. The second night we camped on a slightly bigger island and drank rum. It was pretty good.
The captain, Miguel, has spent most of his life on the water and is as good a sailor/boatman as I have seen which made us feel very comportable. The real character on board was a young local named Kevin. Kevin is heavily tatooed (including his own name fairly prominant on his arm - in case he forgets it, I guess). He has some pretty serious looking gangster style ink (guns and skulls etc), which at first made me quite wary of him. He also has a serious scar on his back which he told us was from a stabbing. He had told Miguel when he starting working on the boat that he used to "kill people for a living" and had been in jail. He refused to wear the company issue red shirt because it was the colour of a rival gang. As it turns out Kevin isn't quite as dangerous as he thinks he is. Kevin is one of those people who physically can't stop talking and I think makes most things up as he goes along - and he is actually extremely funny (although I think he believes most of what he says). As for the tatoos - his older brother is a tatoo artist and used to practice on Kevin when he was younger and Kevin didn't have much say in it. As for the stabbing scar, he ended up telling us a number of different stories... I think he might have had a skin cancer cut out. He kept us laughing for the whole trip.
We sailed into Placencia on the southern coast of Belize. Plancencia is a bit like Caye Caulker in that it is more of a staging point for activities like sailing and diving rather than a destination in its own right. It's got some great bars and restaurants right on the beach and has a really good buzz about it.
After a couple of days taking it easy we decided to move on to Honduras and the Bay Island of Roatan.

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