You Betta Belize It

What can I tell you... we are enjoying ourselves... We went snorkeling on the coral reef, looked for some lobsters there; we eat in the local restaurants, drink in local pubs--we are having fun.

Today John’s son will arrive and we will sail further south to check out some smaller islands and atolls. My fun is scheduled to end on third of the January when I’m going to fly back home. Tanya and John will continue sailing south all the way to Guatemala and return home in two months. Unless they like it here too much...

So this is now a typical fun vacation, and I don’t believe that every typical vacation deserves a blog... you’d get tired of me saying how wonderful everything is. So I’m gonna cut it here.

For the end, like in the movies, I would like to run some credits:

- Thanks to Robert J. who helped me update this blog while we were sailing down here. Blogger has a service where you can send your posts via email, but it doesn’t allow you to send pictures. So I emailed my posts with pictures to Robert, and he was posting them online.

- Thanks to my dad who worried about me too much, but who was providing some valuable information on weather, and who was also updating our position on the online map.

- Thanks to John’s dad, who was researching port in Progreso, provided some good tips on sailing, and he was also updating us on the weather.

- To my wife who let me go to this trip by myself, “to get it out of my system.” It’s out of the system baby... for now :)

- To Vanessa, who wasn’t afraid to sign her comments, for her humor and encouragement.

- To all others who made comments and encouraged me to write.

So start planning your own big adventure, it’s fun... you betta Belize it!

Sailors of the Caribbean 2

So we went through hell to get to paradise. After our madly run south together with waves, we had to make a sharp turn right to get to Belize. But the wind did not die down as we expected, and the waves were just the same.

I really worried about sailing parallel with waves while heeling on one side because we also have wind on “the beam” (blowing perpendicular to our boat). I worried that one of those giant waves will roll us over. So I suggested to John to turn very slowly and cautiously and overshoot our destination if necessary.

But John got one of those sudden strikes of confidence and just turned our boat southwest. It was dark already and we couldn’t even see the waves coming at us. That was too much for me so I just went down below and tried to sleep until my shift comes. Again, I had my phone ready in zip-lock baggies.

As we came closer to the land the waves got smaller, but we were now going too fast. At this pace we would’ve come to San Pedro before dawn which would make it hard to navigate through the coral reef that stretches in front of San Pedro.

So, we took the sails down and started motoring. The next morning was beautiful, the waves were gone and we found the passage through the corals. We anchored at San Pedro at 7:45am. After that we set up our dingy, took a shower and made ourselves presentable since we were about to visit the customs office.

The customs officer was the friendliest customs officer I’ve ever seen in my life (and I’ve visited a few countries so far). He was almost ready to leave his office and go have a beer with us after he cleared our papers, if only there wasn’t a line in front of his office.

San Pedro is just an awesome place. Lots of activity on the beach, yet completely relaxed. Tourist crowd is international: Germans, Mexicans, and of course, a whole bunch of Americans. Locals are incredibly friendly, relaxed and cool. They themselves are very mixed culturally: ancestors of Mayans, Brits, Africans and Spanish people. I read somewhere that the whole country was started by pirates!

Since John’s son is flying to Belize to join us, and we thought that we would be late at arriving here, John reserved a hotel room for his son. At the same time his son changed his plane ticket and he will be arriving a day later.

But, we decided to check in to the hotel room anyway. The hotel is a small two stories house on the beach and I’m sitting on the porch in front of our room and writing this. People are walking down on the beach below--there are numerous bars and restaurants there so the beach is more like a promenade.

Last night we were scared for our lives… and now this! My vacation can finally begin.

Sailors of the Caribbean

Ok, that part about the biggest waves so far in my previous post--cancel that. Huge winds (30 knots) are blowing now from North creating 15 to 20 feet waves. The good thing is that we are now traveling down wind, together with those monster waves.

I knew we are going sailing, but I didn't know we will be surfing on this trip as well. As those huge waves come from behind us, they gently lift the boat up, and then the boat leans forward and rushes down the wave--so we are riding the waves with our sailboat.

I'm not going to lie to you--it was s bit scary at the beginning. I had my satellite phone and hand-held GPS packed in four zip-lock baggies and kept it all in my packet the whole night. Just in case.

But we've been doing this surfing thing for a day and a half now and we sort of got used to it. A hill of the wave comes from the behind, we surf for a little bit, the end of the boat slides sideways a bit, but Otto the auto-pilot rights it up immediately. All we have to do is feed Otto's batteries from time to time by running the engine, and enjoy the ride.

The forecast says that wind and waves will go down somewhat by tomorrow, and we will also come behind some islands so it will be ok.

Last night a large cruise ship crossed our way. We could see colorful lights on its deck as they were probably having a Christmas party. I wished we could just tie up next to it and join the party. I could also imagine captain of that ship thinking: "Look at them fools, in that little sailboat in such weather!"

To raise his crew's spirit, our captain is promising us lots of gold, rum, and dollar-hookers once we make it to Belize. (Note to my wife: Baby, you know John's sense of humor, he's just kidding... there is no gold in Belize)

Some people asked me how is the cat doing. As far as I can tell, he is taking it exceptionally well for what I would expected from a cat. He's an old salt by now and he loves to come out on the deck and watch the sea. The only problem with him is when we come to a port; he tries his best to run away. But when we are under way, he accepts his bleak situation rather well, and tries to enjoy the ride. My guess is that he keeps the hope alive that he will manage to escape at the next stop.

Ok, now a note to my wife, seriously:
In the long hours of solitude when the other two are resting down below and I am piloting by myself, I think a lot about you and kids. The lonely sea, and some terrifying moments we had, make me think how good we have it, and how lucky I am to have you. Now, this being said, please don't eat all of the holiday cookies and cakes--I'm coming on the third. Love you, Igor

Belize Navidad

We had a really rough night after we left Progreso. The waves were huge and our engine stopped working twice, putting John in a panic state. He was frantically checking oil filters, and fuel hoses. Just when we were ready to raise sails (which wouldn't be fun at all to do in the dark, without working engine, and with big waves--you better don't fall into the water in situation like that), John noticed that the manual fuel pump is stuck, indicating that the hose leading to it is clogged.

We took the pump out and John cleared the hoses. We didn't have any more problems with the engine after that.

Following day was pretty uneventful. The wind shifted to the West so we raised the sails. I had fun reefing the main sail in the waves, it's an adrenaline rush (don't worry mom, I was very careful, had my harness on and all).

Slowly but unsurely, as John says, we arrived to Isla Mujeres this morning around 8:00 am. We quickly refueled and left at 9:00. I am bummed that we couldn't stay longer, at least to have a decent breakfast there. Isla Mujers looks like a really fun place--a Mediterranean village with Mexican flavor.

The reason we didn't want to stay longer was that we were afraid that they would require us to register with Mexican immigration, which normally takes a whole day and who knows how long would it take on the Christmas day.

We are headed South now, our next destination is San Pedro, Belize.

Assumptions

By the time we approached Progreso it was already pitch dark. We saw lots of bright neon lights on the water, and we figured they must be local fisherman doing the night fishing with lamps.

As we were passing near one of them an open boat without any lights approached us out of nowhere. There were two guys in the boat; one was in the back stirring the outboard engine, and the other one was at the front of the boat yelling something at us. We had no idea what he was saying since none of us speak Spanish. It looked as if he was warning us of something.

A lesson from my artificial intelligence book: in all human communication, very little is actually communicated, and most of information is actually assumed by the parties that communicate.

Later we figured, the poor guy was not speaking Spanish at all--it was just our assumption. He was yelling "Nets, nets!" as we kept yelling back at him: "No habla Espanol!" They sure thought we are complete idiots.

Soon after that we noticed that our boat is passing across something that looked like a rope stretched underneath the water. Luckily, our prop didn't get caught in their net and everything was fine.

Finding the fuel dock at night, in an unfamiliar port and shallow water was an intense experience. But after some going back and forth we eventually found it. We tied to the fuel station dock around midnight. There was nobody there so we just took some time to clean up our boat, and we all took a shower.

It was funny to walk on the dry land after spending so much time on the waves. I heard stories about "sea legs" but I thought they were a bit of exaggeration. Well, it's not; I really felt insecure as I was trying to revert back to my "land legs".

In the morning we met some very nice people who helped us refuel, refill our water tank, and we were even able to buy some Coke and beer (they only had Superior and Sol, no Modelo or at least XX... so we had to put our beer snobbism aside and we opted for Superior. Such a hard life it is to be a sailor--you always have to make compromises).

We are off motoring towards Isla Mujers now, and the sea is getting rougher and rougher. We are probably in 10-ft waves now, but we are pressing on.

Progressing to Progreso

We decided to definitely make a stop at Progreso, and refuel there. The sea is very calm today, but there is also not much wind, so we are motoring with our last remaining fuel. Hopefully, the fuel station in Progreso will be open when we get there.

We saw a huge sea turtle and made a circle around it to take some photos. The poor thing looks like it's tangled in something so we decided to free him up. But every time we approached it with our boat, the turtle would dive in and disappear.

Other than that, not much else is on the sea besides bunch of Portuguese Man Of War jellyfishes, and flying fishes. Those flying fishes are amazing, they can fly for so long, and they follow the waves up and down as they fly few inches above the water.

I'm reading my Artificial Intelligence book, and a section on human mind development talks about how our early childhood experiences and desires shape our future life. That immediately reminded me of a neighbor kid from my childhood back in Sarajevo. His parents would often go to Austria, which meant that he had access to all the cool western-made toys. He had this really nice toy sailboat, and I was drooling over it. I probably bothered my parents with how I would really like a toy boat for birthday. So eventually someone got me a boat, but it was a power boat.

When I think about it now, it was a really cool powerboat too. It had two tiny battery-powered outboard engines in the back. But, that didn't quite work for me since I wanted a sailboat. So I made a hole on the top of it, put in a stick (I think it was the handle of a wooden spoon) and cut sails out of grocery bags.

But at that age I didn't understand that sailboat needs a ballast at the bottom in order to stay upright. So when my neighbor came to play with me, and we filled up the bath tub, his boat floated beautifully while mine was just keeling over.

So I guess I'm now being stuck on this boat, and I went on this silly trip all because I'm still trying to prove to my old neighbor that my sailboat is as good as his.

Do you hear me neighbor? Who is being a cool sailor now, huh buddy?

Cockpit

This morning I spent sitting in the cockpit. During the lunch time, I was also in the cockpit.

I moved to the other side of cockpit in the early afternoon since we tacked.

The late afternoon however brought some unexpected changes. I went into the galley to get some soda! Then, I returned to cockpit.

It's amazing how doing nothing makes you even lazier. And, it's so tiring too! Watching the waves splash and pass by can be a whole day occupation.

Nevertheless, I managed to read large chunk of one of my books, so there is some sense of accomplishment.

Also, my beard is growing longer.

This wind is really not favorable to us right now so we are thinking about
alternatives. We are checking to see if we can get some fuel at Progreso, a small town on Yucatan, in which case we would later motor to Isla Mujeres. If not, we'll have to continue to zigzag up wind.

We saw a set of sails far on the horizon in front of us. So far that's the first encounter we've had with other boats. It soon disappeared from the sight as they were probably going in the opposite direction.

That's it for today, TTYL.