Quotes of the Trip

• "On the beach with a Horny Monkey" -Jen
• "If I have to wear this same pair of underwear the whole trip, everybody is going to have a bad time." -Matt (while our luggage was MIA)
• "Any day NOW!" -Matt (telling steve to get the heck out of the water because he is shaking hands with the 5 ft barracuda)
• "Stop Humping Me" - Matt to Steve. Steve's response, "Well if you weren't hogging the food with that massive spread of yours" (mimicked wing span squatted stance)
• "You should have had it hanging out" -Jen
• "I don't think anyone else from the Rofo/Springford area has ever sailed Porto Stuck! That's safe to say" -Steve
• "I think that Dolphin gave us the Stink eye!!" -Steve
• "Matt, can you pump my pee?" -Jen. Matt's reply "I've already pumped your poop!" (we were having toilet pumping issues.....yeah gross but it all worked out). Jen's response "Hey, that was a sensitive situation!"
• "Everyone's drunk and doesn't give a s*!# about sticks....I'm mowing 'em down!! -Steve
• As Matt surfs/trips/rides down the stairs...."Whoa, slippery sons of bitches!"
• "Matt, I'm not sure but I think that is coral right in front of us."-Val

April 25th

The first day of our trip. We woke up super early to get to the airport, departure time of 6am. From Philly, we used American Airlines, transferring through Miami on our way to Belize City. The Belize City airport is small and is easy to navigate. We then jumped onto a 10-15 person puddle jumper, Tropic Air, to get to San Pedro. This only took 15 mins. The views were great. San Pedro is a big small town. It has cramped streets, no street signs, and traffic. However, it is only a few miles long. Every corner has a place to eat or drink and the local cuisine is great. Try some larger more popular places (Carambas, etc.) but don't forget the hole in the wall kitchens. We used TMM charters for our boat rental and chose to use the split provisioning option but not to purchase the beverages through the company. The provisioning was great. Lots of food; fruits, veggies, meat, bread, etc. So much food that we had to throw some out due to letting it go bad because we couldn't eat it. Next time we are thinking of shopping for our own food. We thought we had too much food for the trip. The only thing stopping us before this trip was the fact that grocery stores are not well stocked and expensive. When we went to get our drinks, we found it difficult to find nicely priced liquor, soda, and water. The soda distributor, the beer distributor, and the liquor stores are all well separated. No street signs and crappy maps made it difficult to find the stores. We ended up getting 4 cases of beer, a couple of rum bottles, and a case of diet cola. We drank it all. Also, they suggest .5 gallons of water per person per day. Do it. If you don't drink it all, you can use it in case you run out of fresh water. We did the last day :) We stayed at the Sunbreeze hotel prior and post the sailing trip. An excellent place to stay. The rooms are nice and clean. Great A/C, pool, lounge chairs, and bar. The restaurant, Blue Water Grill, is attached to the hotel and has great food and drinks!! Jen recommends the "Horney Monkey" as a night cap. The staff is very helpful and kind. This was not an all inclusive hotel so bring tip money. We had a great first day though were always thinking about our lost bags. We were told by the airlines that they don't know where they are and they could be delivered the next day at 5pm. 5 hours past our departure time. Pack a spare change of clothes in your carry on if you check a bag.

April 26th

This was our first and shortest sailing day. After our briefing of the boat and charts and after we finally got our bags, we departed south towards Cay Caulker. This sail was easy with the ENE winds. The depths were between 7-9ft. The water had more swells then I was thinking it would. We had 12 plus knot winds and made 6 -8 mph. The trip from San Pedro took about 2 hours. You can see Cay Caulker from the dock so it is easy navigating. The boat sailed fine which gave the crew enough time to get to know the "ins and outs" of the boat. We anchored on the north side of the pass in about 6ft of water. It had great cover from the winds but required a longer dingy ride into shore and having to cross the strong current moving through the island. I'd stay on the southern side of the pass if I was you. Look for the Red Monohull. We hooked two anchors and went into shore for some local grub. We had Mango Mojitos at a new age looking bar called Paradiso (or something of the sort). It is right on the water. We were able to see most of the island since it is super small and easy to walk. There were plenty of dogs, and locals moving about. I thought this town was better than San Pedro. They are all about moving slow and enjoying life. Here you can grab the things you forgot in San Pedro. Beer, liquor,.....I mean, Ice, and soda. :)

April 27th

Woke up early with the sun. No shades on the boat, might want to bring some of those sissy black eye covers. But why would you want to sleep when you can swim with dolphins. We had a small pod swim close to the boat. I decided to try and pull a sea world but apparently wild dolphins aren’t as personable as you’d think. Plus it is kind of scary. I did get a nice picture though, makes it look like I was close to them. We pulled anchors and headed south towards water cay. Got a little bit of a late start, 10am, but made it there a little after 2pm. We had to pass through Porto Stuck before then. Not fun. The only way you can get a safe passage is to keep a straight bearing from Cay Caulker. It is marked by a crappy little tripod and supposedly a line of sticks. We only counted one. We dropped the jib and motored sailed through the Stuck leaving the tripod 20 yards off our starboard side. It was difficult approaching the pass since all the surrounding cays where low, patchy, and looked the same. Even more difficult was getting around Mapps Cay. This is below Porto Stuck. Here we had the drowned Cays to our portside (cay known for families of Manatees). We had to keep the “slow manatee zone” signs to our starboard and another group of sticks to our port. Oddly enough, no sticks were seen and the signs were damaged. They were broken in a way that the signs were missing leaving the two poles on either side, giving the illusion of two sticks next to each other. Be so, we keep the signs to our portside coming through the pass. It was either my gut instinct or the fancy depth meter reading 4 feet when I realized we were headed straight towards a coral shoal. “Coral Straight ahead”! Turned the engines over and cut it hard port. That was our first close call. We than proceed to pour the drinks and laugh about our near Network News worthy ship wreck, now that it was smooth sailing to Water Cay. We came in close to the SW corner of the cay. Just below a small lagoon. It was about 6 feet of water but we let out a lot of rode to put some distance between us and the island. We had some winged visitors, black flies. Once we backed off, the breeze was nice and kept them off. Steve and I took the dingy into the lagoon which actually carries through to the SE corner of the island. It was an awesome cruise. Water like glass and saw some cool birds. I wish I had a fly rod with me, “A lagoon runs through it”. We came out the other side and took a peak at the next adventure, Goffs Cay. A small spit of sand with a postcard quality cluster of palms. After returning to the boat we cooked up our first meal of veggies, and chicken. The BBQ was a paid in the butt to get started. The wind would blow the heat right off the coals. You could probably see the ball of fire from space with the amount of lighter fluid we used to finally get it going.

April 28th

We left Water Cay early; we had a lot to do today! We beat into the wind a little rounding Water Cay and headed for Goffs Cay. We just motored for it, took about 45 mins. We were right on the reef’s edge and with the wind we were getting 3 foot seas. We came up on Goffs cay from the west. There are several mooring buoys along the NW corner and W side of the island. We were the only people around so we got the closest buoy possible. Grass huts and a weathered dock make this a great place to relax and take pictures. The travel guide said that this island was prone to litter bugs but I only found a few empty bottles lying around. Nothing that was bad. The snorkeling here wasn’t great, a couple of patchy coral heads and grasses along the north face. The better snorkeling was at English Cay off to our S. This island has a functioning lighthouse so it is easy to discern the two. There is one mooring buoy on the west side, at the end of the dock. We almost mistook it for a lobster trap the buoy was so small. The rope was highly weathered and thin. If the seas were small I wouldn’t have any reservations but it was still a bit choppy so I dove the mooring line. We actually took one of our dock lines and made a safety line in case the thin line broke. Upon further inspection, the anchor to the mooring was actually one of the old time boat anchors. You know, the classic Navy tattoo anchor. Weird but worked. The snorkeling on the north side of the island was hands down the best snorkeling I’ve even seen. The depths range from 5-8 feet with multiple coral heads near the island and then drops off to 20 feet along the reef break. It was like the opening scene in Finding Nemo, highways of fish and lobsters. Amazing. A deep skin dive can bring you face to face with large jacks, groupers, angle fish, parrot fish, squirrel fish, ….. I wish we could have spent an entire day there but the day was moving along and we had to make sail. From English Cay, instead of going around the back of the Island of Middle Long Cay, we decided to go in front. DON”T DO IT. The front side of Middle Long Cay is nice with clear waters. Some spotty coral but depths ranged from 6 -9 feet. What the mistake was that on one map the pass between Blue Range Field, the next cay down, and Middle Long Cay had no coral where the other, which was in the cabin, had multiple coral heads. We started to make the pass between the two when almost at once, Val and I saw some brown, shallow patches. Steve seconded the sightings. With probably only 30 secs to spare, the motors were fired up again and turned hard to port. We than found the better chart but was so far into the coral field we were forced to pass through the harbor of Blue Range Field. This was no easy feat either. With one large coral patch in the middle and another on the southern entrance, we had the whole crew on deck looking for trouble. After passing through BFR we had a close call with a squall that snuck up on us from the NE. Not much rain got us but had some good wind and picked up some speed. We anchored at Colson Cay around 4pm. Found a few blue holes on the west side close to the mangroves. When you expect 2-3 ft of water but see the bottom fall out beneath the dingy, it sends a chill down your spine. We had a monohull neighbor to our stern, thankfully a few hundreds yards off since we think the captain was bareassin’ it. Jen got real sun burnt throughout the day and was sick all night. Not fun when you only a few days into the trip.

April 29th

We jumped into the water early to get some snorkeling done. Had some good coral off to the west. We probably should have dingyed over but we had no where to secure it so we just swam. We wanted to go check out the blue holes before we went back to the boat so we cut across towards the island. We were able to get a good long look at a huge Eagle Ray circling the hole, which was awesome. Couldn’t see the bottom in certain spots and the water coming out of the hole was frigid. However, something was using this area as a home or hunting ground. I looked ahead and saw a monster barracuda lurking in the shadows of the water. I signaled Steve and Val to look (our signal for biting animals is to make a biting mouth with our hands, a pinching animal was a similar signal but with straight fingers). Once noticing that this guy was pushing 4-5 feet in length and very curious we decided to go back to the boat. Val stayed in front while Steve and I swam in the rear, on our back to keep an eye on our friend. Now, “fang”, was pushing our comfort level inching closer within kicking distance of our flippers. It is unnerving how easy it was to loose sight of him only to find him closer on the other side of you. I being the last one out of the water, left him within 3 feet of my face when I got out. No more swimming here. We headed north for the first time in our trip, towards Spanish Cay. Passed a surfaced sea turtle and a pod of dolphins on the way. We were going to try and get to Rendezvous Cay but the pass is difficult and we wouldn’t have much time to hang out anyways. We anchored west of the point of Spanish cay, just south of the pink huts at are part of the Belize Adventure lodge on the island. We made reservations with the lodge for dinner. This place was awesome. There was no guests on the island at the time so they made a menu up just for us. We had our own escort the whole night, including our personal tour of the manatee museum on the island. The restaurant is on the eastern shore and is very hard to navigate to through the coral. But if you dingy to the western pink huts you can walk across the island on their nature trial made out of recycled sugar cane.

April 30th

A morning dip and bagel with cream cheese hit the spot. We left of the drowned cays around 10am. We found an inlet just south of maps cay which had plenty of water. We motored in about 200 yards and anchored. After loading up on the sunscreen and went as far to put on long sleeves, we jumped in the dingy to see if we couldn’t spot some wildlife. Not too long into our journey we came across a pod of dolphins that were so friendly they came within touching distance of our port side. Spooked us because we didn’t expect them to get so close but still amazing. Soon after, we spotted a nose breathing in the water. We turned off the motor and paddled closer to see the back and tail of a surfacing Manatee. A beautiful place but blazing hot at noon. We could only stay out for 45 minutes and had to return to the boat. We came out and headed for Porto Stuck once more. This time the wind forced us to go off optimum heading which aloud us to try our hand at tacking. I also made it a goal to try and sail Porto Stuck. Maybe not the safest thing to do when you’re heading into the wind with limited room for error but I guess the Botzler nature got the best of me. After a couple of minor tacks to get the proper bearing, Steve and I shot the gap, making it safe to say that we are the only people in history from the Royersford/Trappe area to sail Porto Stuck J (T-shirts soon to follow). The open sea between Cay Caulker and Porto Stuck is safer if you stay close to Cay Chapel. Found that out the hard way. The map show 7-9 feet but we found several spots between the southern end of Hicks Cay and Long Cay at 4 feet. It cut back our “beer time” but kept things interesting. Also, the random placement of sticks in the area are a pain. My guess is that they are markers for lobster traps but who knows. Made slow time and anchored at Cay Caulker at 4pm. We decided to stay here for two nights and give us a chance to slow down a little. Be that, we dingyed over to the Lazy Lizard and helped ourselves to some local rum. Me more than the others I guess, since I was apparently the life of the party. Eat some local food, excellent, again.

May 1st

Today was nothing but relaxing in the morning on the boat, taking a walk on Cay Caulker and lying by a pool facing the beach with some fruity cocktails. It was nice and relaxing and the weather was great. We got back to the boat to cook up the rest of our food before we got back to San Pedro. We had steak, pork chops, rice, and veggies. We also started to put the peddle to the metal on the liquor and beer we had left. Our friendly neighbors motored over to us in the later afternoon warning us that some local kids were getting curious around our boat when we were out. He spooked them off by getting on the radio which we assume they over heard on our VHF while they were nearby. We didn’t find out until we got back to the TMM dock that we were missing one oar from our dingy and our emergency hatch inside the starboard hull was opened from the outside (scary). I was unaware of the petty theft in the area and would have gotten a portable motion alarm or something before I came (our neighbor had one). All was well though, nothing was missing. This night we also ran out of water. So no more showers for the ladies. I am a big fan of the Navy Seal Shower. Jump in the water, get out, soap up, jump back in, get out, rinse off. We played many card games in the cabin later in the evening, Jungle Speed and Egyptian Rat Screw. Fun times.

May 2nd

We left the harbor around 930am for San Pedro. At this point we hadn’t flown our 5 foot Jolly Roger pirate flag yet and felt that it was the right time. In light of the recent pirate issues in the East we wanted to be slightly PC. Too Bad! We flew the flag. Once we got closer to Ambergris Cay I started to take it down. Unfortunately, it was so windy I lost grip of the flag and it flew overboard! Quickly, Steve brought it back around while I tried to get it with the boat hook but it was already sinking too fast, missing the flag by a few feet. I knew we would loose sight of the flag soon so I threw off my sunglasses and jumped in after it. I had to swim over to it and dive down around 10 feet while it was sinking unusually fast. It was actually a very moving sight, very cinematic. The black flag contrasted with the blue water, sinking (almost flying) in the tropical waters. I was waiting for Johnny Depp to appear at anytime. Steve came around and picked me up and the flag. We motor/sailed up wind towards TMM dock where they came out and met us to take the boat to get fueled. Conveniently, the Starboard engine throttle cable broke during docking. Oh well, your problem now J After all week idling in the mornings and evenings and the motor/sail back we only used 30 USD worth of fuel. Not to shabby. We unloaded our gear and said our goodbyes to the Smilin’ Wide at around 1pm. We checked back into the Sunbreeze Hotel and took a nice long hot shower and relaxed by the pool all day.

May 3rd

The last breakfast in Belize was eaten at Estel’s on the beach. Awesome food. We had Fry Jacks which can be compared to funnel cakes without the powdered sugar. We did some shopping but sadly got back onto Tropic Air at noon towards Belize City. No issues getting our planes back to the states but had a delay in Miami which didn’t put us into Philly until 2am. The good news was our bags made it this time. We had a great time and look forward to planning the adventure.