Belize to Guatemala

Fig. 1. The is the route from Cay Caulker thru port stuck to

 St. George Cay

By Capt. Scott Buckley

Well when I last updated this blog it was when we were checking into Belize at San Pedro on Ambergris Cay.  The events that transpired there were really the last of the difficult times regarding customs and immigration.  I cannot say if it is because were we getting better at it or they where just a series of unfortunate events but we were to learn that our experiences were not that uncommon.
As I write this I am sitting in Upstate NY house sitting and looking for some work to make a little money for the cruising kitty.  We have been to Belize, Guatemala thru the rainy season and then back to Belize for 3 months of prefect cruising and then returning to Guatemala where we stored the boat while we did things in foreign places.  So to get started lets jump back to where the last post left off.

We were still traveling with our buddy boat (Arawa, Sea Mist and Rainbows End) and somehow I had become the leader of this rag tag group even though my intension was to be a submissive follower of the vastly greater cruising experience of my buddy boat partners (more on this later).  We plan to travel next to Cay Caulker.  It is a well know tourist destination and a place we could provision the boat.  We were running low on some essentials.  The trip was only about 13 or 14nm(nautical miles) and we raised anchor the next morning after the sun was well up for good light and slowly made our way down south to Cay Caulker.  The approach to the anchorage was straight forward and we dropped the hook in about 7’ of water.  We dinghied ashore and walked around and saw the sights and bought some very expensive food provisions for the boat.

Fig. 2 Yummy vegetalbes

Fig. 3 The cruising guides info on Cay Caulker

Fig. 4 The dusty street on Cay Caulker.  No cars here.

Fig. 5 Police station

Fig. 6 Main st. in Cay Caulker

Fig. 7 Post Stuck.

We planned the next day to go down to St George’s Cay and had an obstacle of some shallow water for the next day thru a pass between two cays called Port Stuck.  By the way the difference between a cay (pronounced Key) and an island is that both are bodies of land surrounded by significant water, or islands, however a cay is always a low profile island. The controlling depth thru Port Stuck was stated at 6’ and we drew 5’ 6” so it was going to be close.  Add to that the pass is very narrow and the cruising guide we were using was about 10 years old.  A cruising guide is a book incase you got confused and thought we had kidnapped a child and were forcing him to tell us where to go but, now that I have said that, stealing a child and forcing them to be your local guide may be a workable idea.  While the guide's age was not the problem it did reference sticks sticking out of the water and to only pass these 10 yr old sticks (keeping them close) to starboard. This was concerning due to; 1. the reference was ten years old, 2. they were sticks, 3. this area is prone to hurricanes, 4. did I mention that they were sticks and no where in the definition of stick is the verbiage “HURRICANE PROOF”.

So off we went in search of Port Stuck hoping to not get stuck at Stuck.  So with the aging guide book and our general nervousness we decided to line the boats up in order of draft of the water they drew under the keel.  That meant the first boat would be Sea Mist at 4’ 3” draft and then Rainbows end at 4’ 10” then Kooky Dance at 5’ 6” and finally Arawa at 5’ 9”.  So as we approached Port Stuck SV Arawa and SV Kooky Dance had to slow way down to let Sea Mist and Rainbows end pull ahead.  Remember we had, as a group, agreed to a plan about boat order however as Sea Mist and Rainbow’s End were closing the distance they also began slowing down further to the point that Greg (SV Arawa) and SV Kooky Dance were nearly motionless in the water.  This is not as easy as it sounds when under sail.  You cannot turn off the wind.  You cannot throw the sails into reverse.   I was tempted to get on the radio and entreat them to get a move on and get thru the cut but apparently they had other intensions.  Sea Mist began heading way off course to the east from the guide book's directions and Rainbow’s End was now heading the wrong direction to the west when the course thru the cut was south.  On SV Kooky Dance the 1st mate and I had decided that Tamera would man the helm (drive) and I would go up to the bow and watch for obstacles because we believed I was much better at reading the water color for depth contours.  With Sea Mist off course and Rainbow’s End heading the wrong direction we had no choice but to proceed ahead and go thru the pass before the others.  The water looked very shallow in all directions.  A called back to the helm and asked for the depth from the instrument display.  Tamera reported first 7.5’ then 9.7’ then 2.6’.  We knew what was happening.  In shallow water with a hard bottom the depth-o-meter or fathometer sometimes suffer from a phenomena called multi-pathing.  The fathometer works by emitting a sound pulse into the water and then listening for the echo off the bottom.  The fathometer measures the time from when the pulse was emitted to when the echo off the bottom was received and determines the depth by multiplying that time by the speed of sound thru water.  When the bottom is hard and very close as in it is when in shallow water the echo return is very strong and will bounce of the hull of the boat or the surface of the water and go back down to the bottom and return back up and get received by the fathometer.  These are false echoes and our fathometer is kind of stupid in that is does not reject false echo and gladly reports them as erroneous depths.  So we got out the lead-line.  A lead-line is a length of rope with a weight at one end and marks along is length.  We mark our lead-line in red from 0 to 6’ and anything over 6’ in green.  I deployed the lead line and read 6’.  Told the helm to call Sea Mist to the west for their depth even though they were behind us.  They reported 7’ so I had the helm steer 20 degrees to starboard and took another lead-line reading.  6’ still no improvement.  We called out depths to Greg and Candy on SV Arawa, who were following close behind us and he confirmed the same depths.  That meant I had only 6” between our keel and the hard bottom and poor Greg only had 3”.  We got thru somehow and we even saw sticks.  They were all over the place.  

I am pretty sure the choreographed boat dances by Sea Mist and Rainbow’s End were intentional but made to look like confusion in order to trick me into giving up following them so they could then follow me.  This cleverly choreographed boat maneuvering meant to look like total confusion was executed on numerous occasions and it was not long before I caught on to their scheme.  When I confronted them about it, they were acting unconvincingly innocent but not entirely surprised at the accusation. 

So sailed on down to St. George’s Cay with SV Kooky Dance and SV Arawa in the the lead.  We anchored in 6” of water on a very grassy bottom.

We did not stay long at St. George’s Cay and sailed next to Colson Cay where it was reported to be good snorkeling.  The winds were good and we decided to NOT wait for the other boats and let SV Kooky Dance do her thing.  She flew with the wind at 6 knots and we got to the Cay by noon and picked an anchorage next to a reef.  We had not been snorkeling since Mexico and Colson Cay did not disappoint.

Fig. 8 Colson Cay reef

Fig. 9 Colson Cay reef

Fig. 10 Colson Cay reef

 
That afternoon we moved the boat to anchor closer to the Cay and put some distance between us and the coral reef for the night.  We moved back to the reef the next day.  We stayed there for 2 days and snorkeled both days.  On the second day I caught some lobster for lunch and dinner.  There was some bad weather coming and we had planned to sail down to Sapodilla and then Placentia but because we stayed and extra day at Colson Cay we changed the plans to sail all the way to Placentia (41 nm) from Colson the next day.  We hauled anchor at 7:00AM the next morning and SV Kooky Dance lead the way.

Fig. 11 The Ascension Fleet in hot pursuit of SV Kooky Dance  

In the middle of the days the winds eased and that let the other boats catch up as they were motoring sailing (sailing and using to motor for more speed) and not just sailing. In the after noon the winds picked up again and SV Kooky Dance was off again.  The rest of the fleet planned to sail around and enter Placentia from the south but the crew of SV Kooky Dance chose to sail thru the narrow cut at the north end of Placentia harbor.  The Cut was a bit tricky and narrow at first but proved to be quite manageable.    Like most harbors entering it for the first time is always a tense.

Fig. 12 The northern cut entrance into the 

Harbor at Placentia, Belize

Fig. 13 The approach to the northern cut into Placentia Harbor.  The is a sand bar to the right of the cut (hard to see in the picture) making it very narrow.

We actually stayed in Plascencia for the next couple of weeks.  Plascencia was a big goal destination for us and there was much to see about this place.  We had laundry to do and some boat repairs to complete and that being said it did not stop us from having some fun while we were there.

Fig. 15 The famous Yoli's Bar at Placentia

Fig. 14 Smoothies

Fig. 16 SailFish Resort where they had free Wednesdays for /cruisers. 

Fig. 17 The Ascension Fleet gang right before a good old street 

fight between me and that lady in pink (Pam).  It was close

and if I had worn good shoes I might have not lost so quickly.

Fig. 18  Don from SV Rainbow's End

Fig. 19 Rowing into the dock at Placentia

On about the 26th of April 2018 we checked  out of Belize with customs and immigration to begin working our way down to Guatemala.
We sailed from Plascencia to a point or cape of land sticking out in Amatique Bay in Guatemala called Cabo Tres Puntas (three points).

Fig. 20 Cabo Tres Puntas is that finger of land at top center and the sand bar and entrance to the Rio Dulce

is to the southwest.  That distance is about 9nm.

 It was another 40nm sail from Placentia and was pleasant sailing. From hear it was only a 9 to 10nm trip to the Rio Dulce River outlet at Livingston.  Where we anchored down at Cabo Tres Puntas the fathometer showed we were in only 15’ of water but the bottom looked dark through the very clear water.  When I dove down to check on the anchor set I found the bottom was covered with a very dark brown sand and I saw the most sand dollars and starfish I had ever seen.  Unlike the coral sand in Belize, that was nearly white, this sand was dark (probably Vulcanic) so visual navigation here would be a very different game and the water may appear to be much deeper than it actually is.
Even though we were in Guatemalan waters we had not officially checked into the country.  To do that we would need to sail to Livingston Guatemala at the mouth of the Rio Dulce.  To get there we would have to cross a shallow bar at the river’s outlet into the Bay of Amatique.  The next morning we had a 1.5 high tide at 7:05AM so we planned to leave the anchorage a 5:00AM and sail the 9 nm to the bar off Livingston.  The winds were light and from the east so we may end up motoring the next morning.
This place was beautiful and I wondered why we had not heard more about it.  Early the next morning we would learn a little more of why this was not a particularly good place to hang out.