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.

Elements

After having few peaceful days, last night was really rough, and high waves continue today. Sky turned from beautiful blue yesterday, to all gray today. From all the rocking and swinging some wooden shelves inside galley broke loose and we had to improvise a solution to keep things in place. A bottle of dish soap fell down on top of the refrigerator door (the refrigerator door is horizontal, it also servers as kitchen table) and dish soap leaked into the refrigerator, so all our food containers in there are sticky.

But those are minor problems. The big question is if the wind is going to continue to blow from southwest, or is it going to switch to northwest? In order to get to Isla Mujeres we have to confront the Gulf Stream current which can be very strong around Yucatan peninsula. We used up two thirds of our fuel (we were motoring when the wind was weak, and we run our generator once a day), and we are keeping the last third for fighting the current. If the wind remains the same, we would be better off being more south so we hit the current at the last moment, right after we turn around Yucatan. But that would be a bad place to be if the wind changes.

Sailing is all about being in tune with the nature. First of course, you have to be aware of the wind and always keep in mind its direction. You also watch the waves, their direction and size, and you "read" the water by looking for patches of different color in the distance so you can detect the wind gusts coming at you.

Then you also watch the sky, and look for any sort of clouds that may mean trouble. Of course, the most significant are those clouds that are in direction from which the wind is blowing, since those are the ones that are coming your way.

At night, you watch the stars. In the dark, moonless nights like those that we are having so far on this trip you look for the patches of sky without the stars--it means they are being hidden by clouds.

That's as far as a beginner like me can go, but experienced sailors can probably read a whole bunch of other things, maybe even predict when fog, or a change in the wind direction is coming.

Then of course, you also have to be in tune with your boat. You listen for squeaks and bangs, tightening of the ropes, fluttering of the sails, and for flow of water around the hull.

None of this is hard; you just need to pay attention.

Cowboy Sailor

Yesterday our captain Pig allowed us to have a shower! What a joy, and it was much needed.

But seriously, John was smart to be cautious with water consumption at least until we get closer to the land.

Sol Searcher is equipped with a shower cabin, but we opted to shower on the deck so we can use sea water for the first rinse. After soaping, we would rinse with fresh water that was suspended from the mast in a large plastic bladder.

For those that don't know, John first got me into sailing few years ago when he asked me if I would buy a small 19-ft sailboat half-half with him. We had lots of fun with that boat and both learned a lot from it. Later, John sold me his share of the boat and purchased Sol Searcher.

What I like about John is his stubbornness and his "dang it, let's do it!" attitude. I crave for some kind of adventure in my life, but I tend to make my life too complicated, with too many projects. I am also sometimes too analytical (can't you tell from these posts?). So it's great to have a friend who calls you one day, and out of the blue suggests that two of you should buy a sailboat just because he found a cheap one on eBay. My first reaction was: "Do you know anything about sailing 'cose I sure don't, and where are we going to keep it, and how are we going to tow it with our little cars?" John's response was "Nah, we'll figure it out."

I think in his younger days he was a true punk. When I say true punk, I mean he more or less lived the punk culture, not just posed as a punk. Remains of those days still show today in his stubbornness--forget about suggesting anything to him, he's gonna take your advice only after his own plans fail.

He also likes to play a jerk sometimes, but he does it with a good sense of humor. Like his remarks about how he's going to trade Tanya for drugs once we get to Belize. Or that one time when he had his old VW van with sliding door on the side, and Maria, a friend of ours, was in the van telling us about something while John and I were standing outside and listening. John's hand was on the sliding door as we were about to get in the car and hit the road as soon as Maria's finishes her story. But the story got long, so John just simply slid the door shut in the middle of Maria's sentence. It was so funny though, even Maria had to laugh.

Or, that one time when we went sailing on our first boat, and I brought a fancy camera to take some pictures. While I was messing with the sails, John took my camera and took a picture of his butt. What he didn't know was that I borrowed the camera from my parents, and that they eventually developed the film.

As a captain, he's good at communicating his frustrations, and not always so good in communicating his intentions. But as this sailing adventure progresses, I am having more and more confidence in him. Both Tanya and I depend greatly on John during this trip since he is so much more familiar with his boat. Sol Searcher is like a little space ship--it takes great amount of knowledge to operate it.

What gives me confidence are some moves that he made in the last few days. When winds were high and sea was rough the other day, he reduced the sails in the middle of the day. My reasoning at the time was, let's use the wind to the max while we can, why reduce them now? But when the night came, and the wind got even stronger, it was really good that sails were trimmed. Trimming the sails at night would be risky in those conditions. And doing it in the middle of the day was smart because if something bad happened (like, one of us falling overboard), we would have had plenty of daylight to deal with it.

John also constantly checks things on the boat, like the engine, the screws, and lines. He gets into the hot engine compartment every so often to check on oil filters, and does not leave anything to the chance.

Despite all the roughness, he also has a soft side. He is a romantic--he loved his VW van while he had it, and his sailboat is the center of his life. He cares for nature and he's very careful with what we throw overboard. He can be kind too--he spent a whole bunch of money on a surgery for a wounded cat that one day showed up on his door. He later named the cat God, and God is with us on this trip.

But normally kindness comes from him retroactively. He would yell at us "Are you going to just stand there and watch, or you're going to help me?!" and then later he would apologize for snapping. Today he caught a nice sized sail-fish, and than he let it off the hook as he was feeling guilty: "Sorry fish,... poor guy... oh, I hope he'll be all right."

He's probably going to hate me for saying this, but to me, he is also very Texan. And I mean that in the most positive way.

Simply put, he is a punk cowboy sailor. And I'm sure glad I'm sailing with him.

Sailing Machine

I want to say few words about the boat we are on. It's an old boat, and when John first got it I didn't think much of it. It has those big canopies in the back (dodger and bimini, as I think they are called) which looked to me almost pompous. And then all those shiny metallic parts... it just looked like something that grandpa and grandma would have for their occasional outings to the sea. I am personally more fond of the modern racing sailboats.

But seeing this boat in action last few days in the high seas and strong winds I learned that all those extra parts have their purpose and that this boat is really well designed and perfect for rough conditions. This change of opinion came to me during my last night's shift, as Sol Searcher was digging into the waves, water splashing everywhere, heeling steeply at 30 degrees, sails under the full pressure, and speeding at 6 knots. Yet, I was tucked comfortably under the dodger just making sure that we are using wind in the most optimal way while staying on the best course that this head-on wind would allow.

What can I say... Sol Searcher--a lean, mean, Swedish made, sailing machine.



I was worried that I may be bored on this trip so I brought all kinds of books with me. There are books on programming in .Net, books on artificial intelligence (which has been my interest for a while but never had time to get into it).

But today is such a great day, the waves are small, the wind is strong and we are speeding over the water while leaving a trail of foam behind us. Small clouds are flying low and fast above us. All three of us are comfortably sitting in the cockpit, the music is blasting from the speakers, tummies are full with tuna pasta delight, and we haven't drained our supply of cold beer yet.

We are mostly quiet, with our own thoughts, and just enjoying the day. I'm gonna have to leave reading for some other time.

Up and Down

And all kinds of other realities kicked in too. The most immediate ones had to do with my body. The boat is in constant motion--it rocks sideways, the bow goes up and then crashes down--so my muscles are in constant use, even when I'm laying down. This is going to be more of a workout then a vacation.

All three of us got noxious. John threw up twice last night. I felt terrible for a while too, so I put on my anti-seasick patch. I started feeling better but then the side effects of the patch started: blurred vision, sleepiness. Later I discovered that my patch fell off as soon as I put it on, so the getting better part was all in my head! As for blurred vision and sleepiness, well, yeah, my shift was from 2am to 4am, what did I expect?

My theory is that we didn't get sea sick at all but that mexican food leftovers we had for lunch was the cause of our suffering. My salvation finally came in the form of a little pink pill called Pepto-Bismol. (Thank you Pepto-Bismol for saving my life yet one more time).

We also had a small mishap last night when a big wave splashed us from the top, lifted one of the hatches that wasn't closed tight, splashed John and me as we were sleeping down there, and then closed the hatch. We jumped up and started looking frantically where did the water come from, and it took us a while to figure out the loose hatch explanation.

Despite all this trouble and discomfort, somehow this cruise still manages to be beautiful: night full of bright stars, luminescent planktons that make water light up when Sol Searcher rushes through them, deep blue color of the sea, even the cool spray in my face when we crash into the wave.

Leaving it all behind

We left the Port Aransas channel and now we are in the open seas. It was exciting and just like in the movies--we raised the sails up, the theme music started playing, I was standing on the bow with my arms spread like I’m flying...

The waters of the Gulf were calm, with gentle swells taking us slowly up and down. We saw bunch of dolphins playing around our boat.

Later, the reality kicked in and I realized that it will be like this, up and down, with not really much to do, for a long, long time.

The wind is good, the only problem is that it’s blowing from the wrong direction--right into our nose. So we will have to zig-zag our way into the wind. We decided to start going a bit more south--that way we can also avoid some of the Gulf Stream (the current goes around Yucatan and that is also flowing against us).

Into the fog

This morning was foggy, and boats in Key Alegro marina looked like they are all waiting for something (or was it just me?)

By the time we left the dock the fog cleared, and at the time of writing this it's a beautiful sunny day. We are motoring towards Port Aransas, where we will refuel, set our sails, and leave the land behind.

Still in Rockport

Being an IT guy means I can't escape technical problems even on my vacation. Just as we were getting ready to leave, John discovered that the cable he uses to connect his boat to the land-based source of power is fried. We ran to the store to buy a replacement, but the one store that would have this kind of cable was closed until tomorrow. So it looks like we are stuck at the dock until tomorrow.

Here's a killer business idea: open a floating marine supply store in the middle of the Gulf, since preparing the boat for a cruise seems to be a never-ending task.

John's dad (an old sailor) told me that it's bad luck to leave for a cruise on Fridays, but oh well... I guess we will find out if that's true or not.

We took one final goodbye picture right before we found out about bad cable, here it is:

First post on this blog

Well, I'm not quite sure what do I want to do with this blog, but I guess it's main purpose will be to inform my family and friends of what's going on with me while I'm on this trip. I will try to make it fun to read, but I have to balance that with having fun myself on this adventure--so I probably won't have too much time for creative writing.

Another mystery right now is if I will be able to post to this blog at all from my satellite phone. If not, then you will not hear from me until we find some internet cafe in Mexico or Belize.

We were supposed to leave this morning, however the boat was full of stuff that was all over the place and we needed some time to organize everything. 30-ft boat becomes terribly small when you pack for 30 days, for three people. Not to mention the cat.

We went shopping for food this morning and we swept out half of the grocery store... $465.00 worth of food. I think we now have enough mac & cheese and tuna to circumnavigate the globe.

So we are continuing to pack with a hope that we'll be able to leave before sunset.