I am going out to the offshore reefs aboard Samphire so for the next two weeks any SPOT locations will be sent from that vessel not my own. Desesperado is stored on an islet near Cay Caulker where I think he is safe; I shall return here by water bus after being dropped off at Belize City.
If you took a big double handful of mixed beans and wet spaghetti and scattered them across a table so that not too much fell off you would have some idea of what Belizean waters look like on a chart – an incredible maze of cays and reefs. Most are on the landward side of a long barrier reef (second longest only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef) running north-south miles off the mainland. However outside of that reef lie three other groupings – The Turneffe Islands, an archipelago covering 200 square miles, Lighthouse Reef and Glovers Reef. The latter two areas have fewer cays but all three places are ringed by reputedly fabulous reefs and have great lagoons within containing manatees, dolphins and even 20-foot crocodiles not to mention thousands of fairy castles of coral with all their amazing lifeforms. We will be diving and exploring these as best we can given the weather which at present is blowing a gale as usual though only the trickiness of the reef pass here at Cay Caulker prevents us from departing to the open sea and making the crossing to Turneffe. As I write intrepid Paul and Twyla are off in the zodiac scouting this pass; if they think we can run it safely I will soon be heaving my guts up over the rail into a wild sea. Ah well, nothing comes for free.
High time I wrote a post even if it is only brief. I am inhibited from a full description of events here by the exorbitant price of internet access in Belize.
I am still at Cay Caulker; I’ve been here over two weeks and I’m losing track of time… My trip is going slower and slower; I feel I ought to move on because that’s what people do when they voyage but I like Cay Caulker and am enjoying life here and the north and east winds howl endlessly with frequent black rain squalls making further progress at least uncomfortable if not downright dangerous. It is tropical winter, most objectionable – I never signed up to sail in this kind of stuff. I do sail when I can in the brief intervals of relative calm. A mile out the reef roars and I slip between the coral heads and out through the passes out into the beautiful rolling swells where I trail a lure for barracuda down the reef a hundred feet from the break. Sometimes I get one and Twyla converts it into fabulous ceviche or burgers. More about Twyla in a moment.
Cay Caulker is a low island of sand only 5 km long, ish. The main settlement is a strip of local dwellings and small hotels for the tourists, restaurants and bars, everything on a small scale and nothing over three stories. There are about 2000 people including the tourists and a very laid-back, friendly and casual atmosphere prevails. There is no pretense, no fawning to the tourists, the feeling is that the islanders work the trade without the usual massive influx of outsiders getting in on the game and turning it into a mill. The island motto is “Go Slow”. There are no cars, only golf carts and feet. There is little beach but that does not seem to matter, people wander up and down the strip, eat, go snorkeling by boat out to the reef where big rays and harmless nurse sharks cruise. take trips to see the manatees, dive, kitesurf, sail on old Bahamanian sloops with a rum punch or a panty ripper. Rastafarians hawk carvings and street food on the strip along with other black locals and the Guatemalans. The Chinese own the stores. The local men are not shy, they hawk their wares quite aggressively but with humor, engaging all who pass, but if you don’t want to buy that doesn’t mean the conversation is over.
“The Split” is where Cay Caulker was cut in half I think by Hurricane Hattie and beside this lies the Lazy Lizard bar where at sunset the tourists gather on the sand beneath the palms for a Belizean Beliken beer or a rum punch or a panty ripper and to watch the sun set to the west; it is a Cay Caulker tradition.
Neil of Madelin’s Hardware very kindly let me moor at his dock and Desesperado bounces away there secured by 5 lines against the howling winds. I sail, walk the strip, repair and maintain the boat, swim, fish a little. Some of the locals know me as “Robinson Crusoe” and frequently approach me to express their respect for what I am doing, and sometimes to offer me drugs. They speak a thick Creole which they tune down when speaking to tourists such as myself but it is still hard to understand – when they speak amongst themselves they are almost wholly unintelligible to me. Some are white and it is kind of strange to hear them speak this tongue. They can be rather touchy when drunk – which they are frequently – and though they are big, tough and brave people who need top make a living there seems no malice in most of them. I have been away from Desesperado for several days and nights and nobody has stolen a thing.
I am usually tired by nightfall and go to bed on my platform early (the asphalt shack ceased to stench so badly, but began to leak once more in the frequent blasting downpours so once again I had to tar it and thin the tar with gasoline, the eleventh coating I think, so the stench is back and I have to raise the windward side to let air blow through) but a few times I have been out at night drinking attempting to dance to the most terrible music anybody ever heard. This seems to be a peculiarity of Belize, this awful rhythmless reggae-derived subtlety-free horror-noise to which the locals don’t exactly dance but perform explicit acts of quite serious unsmiling mock-sex on front of all on the dance floor, without the music seeming to move them much at all. We are talking full-on doggie-style and dry-humping. The children do it too and the adults laugh. The tourists are to a man bemused and astonished by all this, none of us can dance to the stuff, even the lyrics are mostly a kind of A.D.D. “whining for sex” as I call it and there is no apparent joy or humor in it at all. On New Years Eve some new DJ was somehow aquired and he played some great stuff from whitey-world which had the floor packed and frenzied and screaming with pleasure and there is just no comparison between the two styles and the fun derived from them so why the hell do the locals stick with stuff that as far as anyone can see is not working even for them, it’s just a mystery to us. I had a terrific New Year’s eve, by the way.
I have made two wonderful friends, Paul and Twyla, aboard their amazingly unique and bombproof sailing vessel, the 52 foot monohull Samphire. http://samphire.ca/. They are anchored off of Cay Caulker whilst considering their next move; they have equipped themselves and Samphire as an expedition vessel-for-hire with marine videography and editing capabilities with a strong bent towards marine biology research. Captain Paul and Twyla are not Benneteau yachties, they are young and tough and practical with scars on their hands with no time for frippery but plenty for laughing and making me feel welcome aboard. Captain Paul, tough, personable and pragmatic with a big smile and a way with words and nuts and bolts and his equal Twyla, immensely capable, utterly fearless, completely endearing, no way a princess but rather beautiful, she is the videographer and webmaster and the glue that holds Samphire together and while Paul makes it possible for the boat to move, it is Twyla who finds the destination. I have spent the last few days and nights afloat with them whilst the weather makes things uncomfortable ashore; we have been making repairs to Samphire and eating well… I love the windy rides out through the dark in the rubber zodiac to the big orange boat swinging at anchor, the spray on my face, bucking over the weirdscape, an experience you could film but it would never look real. I am happy, it has done me a power of good to be befriended by such people and have quality time and intellectual discourse; I am inspired and though it will be sad to move on, I am ready when the time comes. Doubts about the wisdom of continuing persist, but some determination has returned as well.
Yesterday we saw dolphins approaching and jumped overboard in our snorkeling gear to swim with them. They came within a few feet but were either wary or uninterested in us. It was nonetheless thrilling.
I may travel aboard Samphire out to the offshore reefs for a week or two if I can find somewhere to leave Desesperado.
The Bay of Chetumal was mostly a featureless green expanse of water with little to see until well into Belizean waters when numerous small cays began to appear. I landed on one to change up to my big sail in an effort to speed up and get to San Pedro before dark and I just made it to a dock minutes after sundown only an hour ago. Desesperado had a bit of a hard time in these shoal-infested waters; one minute we have two meters under us, the next nothing and at one point we bumped and banged and ground our way over about 300 meters of rocks, but that is what the extra-thick fiberglass on the keel is for. The rudders got banged a lot too. I was met on the dock by a pair of friendly tourists who gave me local information but the locals don’t seem much interested in Desesperado’s magnificence, or perhaps it was too dark. Really I demand a reception with flowers and hula girls.
San Pedro is very pleasant, a brightly painted semi-ramshackle town on a long flat sandy cay. The streets have been paved since I was here last six years ago. Tall, attractive people of all shades of brown, strong Caribbean accents, very laid back. Reggae, dreadlocks, tourists, bananas, golf carts, bicycles with rusty chains, the feeling very different from Mexico in intangible ways. Everybody seems friendly as far as that can ever be really genuine in a tourist haven and I already regret my slight upon the Belizean character in my last post.
When I was last here the cocktail of choice was the “panty ripper” and I am pleased to hear it is still around though it is an awful sweet coconutty thing. I am looking for a drink now myself and rum seems appropriate. It is nice to have such a worthy mission.
Ok, I have decided to carry on just a little further southwards, into Belize. I have been fleeced and cleared to leave Mexico by the authorities, leaving early tomorrow. I should reach San Pedro of the Madonna song, Ambergris Cay, Belize, later tomorrow or sometime the next day. Weather forecasts vary between 10 knot following winds which would be nice and 19 knot following winds which give me the willies.
I may have a slightly nervous disposition – by now you may have noticed that a lot of things give me the willies. Like reefs, shoals, winds, waves, weeds, thunderstorms, pirates… Belize gives me the willies too. If I may most egregiously generalize and stereotype, Belizeans are bigger, more aggressive, more aquisitive and less trustworthy than Mexicans by almost all accounts and my own past experience. But the place is a paradise of small sandy cays and atolls, blue-water bays protected by reefs and all that good stuff. So… I’m going in. I just love saying that.
At last some video! Sailing across the Bay of Chetumal:
It’s not much of a video but it took more than an hour to upload so it’s all I can manage for now. It appears my old SD cards are infected with a virus which has foiled all previous attempt to upload video… this is a new card.
That night in Tulum I wandered about too tired to drink or have “fun” so I returned to the beach to find my hired guard nowhere in sight. He showed up twenty minutes later so concerned and apologetic I had to pay him anyway, nothing was missing after all.
At 1 am. a police foot patrol awoke me, looked at my papers, said I could not sleep on the beach. I said it was the first time in 1500km of coast that this had happened; did they expect me to go out into that black and blowing ocean? They relented and let me stay just this one night, but they were quite uptight about it.
I did not visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum, I don’t do old piles of rocks. It is an extensive area of solid edifices of which a couple overlook the sea. The largest, a well-preserved temple-like structure atop the sea cliff still performs a wonderful function as it is placed more or less opposite the big reef pass, and there are two windows high up that pass light from clear through the building. When light shows through one window only, one must move towards the other window, when light shows through both one is lined up with the deepest part of the pass. I sailed out to confirm this and indeed it was so, though I did not use the pass. And I forgot to take a picture.
A day of no wind, then a strong northerly, then the next day a calm start to the south with a light following breeze. Typically along this coast after dismantling the Asphalt shack and drying out my dew-soaked bed as much as I can I pack everything below and set off straight out from the beach, watching out for coral heads and aiming for whatever gap in the reef I’d run in through the day before. Once outside I keep going straight out for a mile or three to be well clear of reefy surprises, then heave-to and jump over the side for a poo. Poo extruded under water does not break off as it does in air, so some impressive lengths are possible.
I regain the deck, sheet in, pull on the tiller and head downwind to the south. the wind has been right behind me mostly which is counterintuitively not the fastest point of sail for a boat, but if it is strong enough I can go along at a fair speed, seven or eight knots. The sail shades the rising sun and with this north wind cold has become a real issue, I wear clothes but these get wet and I get colder, until my teeth are chattering and I am straining every muscle to keep warm. I have raingear but the spray goes right through it, it needs waterproofing compound of some kind and I am not about to use the only available stuff, roofing tar. If the spray is light it dries off of me multiple times leaving me white with salt.
Typical view ahead.
A coast of no dolphins and few turtles. I expect they are all inside the reef where I dare not travel much for fear of the coral heads. Out at sea flying fish scatter away before me, often thirty or forty at a time.
I fear the spiky limestone rocks that line the coast.
There’s a strong current heading north, up to four knots, the Gulf Stream. This can mean that despite a speed of say six knots through the water I may only be doing two past the land. The reef breakers boom on my right and further away the coast slips past agonizingly slowly, a low limestone shelf interrupted by long white beaches, low scrub, a few coco palms. Past Tulum the hotels faded out entirely and both sea and land became almost completely deserted. A lone shack on the beach once in a while would be the only sign of humanity. Blue water below, varying in shade with depth, swells from behind lifting and surging the boat forward then passing on ahead, the boat wallowing a bit in the trough with its nose up on the back of the departing hill. Surge, wallow, surge, wallow, hour after hour. No break from steering on these downwind courses. I may heave-to for a few minutes now and then to change clothes or dig out a bag of Globitos but mostly I sail without any breaks. The reefs give me the willies, especially when they boom with surf. The charts in my GPS are the only ones available, 32 years old, made I guess by sextant so things are often off by a kilometer leaving one with only one’s eyes and wits to rely upon.
The end of somebody's dream.
I am plagued with anxiety and doubts about what to do when I reach Chetumal and run out of Mexico.
I came near Punta Allen, where a big bay opens up in the coast. The mouth of the bay is perhaps 25 km across and I did not think I could cross that with certainty before dark so I moved in towards the coast with the idea of camping the night, crossed the reef but found myself in a horrible maze of coral heads, some just breaking the surface and all virtually invisible with the sun reflecting off the water ahead. I had a merry time getting through, standing, squinting, shouting stuff like “Enemy off the port bow!” and trying not to get backwinded during extreme hasty turns. I hit one coral head pretty hard but ground over and beyond without I think much damage though the noise was distressing.
Up ahead a lone surprise hotel, a place with eight small palapas, coco-thatched cabañas, in the middle of a long stretch of steep white beach. This is the Sian Kaan nature reserve and only buildings such as this hotel which existed before the reserve was declared exist; nothing new may be built. I landed not far from the hotel thinking there might be a bar, I’ve learned a few tricks you know. I worked the boat up the sand, piled driftwood beneath the ama to level it out, erected the Asphalt Shack, cut some new sacrificial pegs for the rudders from bamboo driftwood and the woody skeletons of fan corals washed up on shore, scaled a palm and ate the best coconuts ever. Some Sol Caribe hotel guests came to say hello, they were very nice, people of taste who had elected this quiet and beautiful spot to vacation at because they are of that increasingly rare breed of person who can actually survive a few minutes without music or some vapid stimulation. Hello Maria and Seppo. I loved this beach, it was absolutely gorgeous and I had a divine, happy time beachcombing, doing my chores and sitting by my fire cooking pasta in a pot of salt and fresh water. There was no noise but the lapping of the sea, no engines, few bugs, neither hot nor cold… as close as I have come to paradise this whole trip. the ghost crabs were my friends, I was happy, and it seems to be no coincidence that I am happiest away from the tourists, in out-of-the-way places. I am unsure quite why this is.
Lovely lovely quiet beach.
My respects to Argentine Maurecio who was most friendly, he runs the Sol Caribe. Again and again I have met Argentines who impress me.
The next day I made a record 79km in a brisk wind with the usual following swell and the day still had a couple of hours to run when I heard a sort of faint whoop from behind me. I looked back and saw nothing but a white stick waving. I tacked back a few hundred meters and found a smiling man in a mask and snorkel with a massive lobster on the end of his speargun spear. This was Pedro. ” Was that you shouting? I asked “Do you need help?”
” I thought it was you who needed help. You look like a Cuban, or a pirate”.
I get this a lot. I am taken for a Cuban all the time although their escape vessels are never anything like mine. Also I am compared to Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean or to Kevin Costner in Waterworld. Waterworld comes up a lot. I am regularly checked for gills.
” No, I don’t need help. I’m just hungry.”
” Stop and camp here. I live there.” He gestured towards a couple of lonely shacks on the beach a half mile away. ” We will eat together. There’ s an entrance to the reef over there and Eduardo will help you when you land. Watch out, there are many rocks.”
I decided to stop, his smile was so engaging. There were indeed many rocks but I missed them and made the beach. Eduardo, Pedro’s 17-year old helper was out tending to the fish trap, a long line of sticks and net that deflected fish down to an enclosure at one end. There was a big moray in it today which is useless to them and dangerous too so Eduardo came back in with only a single fish.
The fish trap.
Miguel Angelo “da Vinci” appeared. Ancient, eight-fingered and one-eyed. He seemed utterly unsurprised to see me. We chatted a bit though I understood little of what he said, then he went off to pole his motorless lancha off down the beach to set his net.
Three huts there were, nothing else for miles but a dirt road ran along the coast a hundred meters inland. Pancho showed up on a motorcycle and came to admire Desesperado and talk. A couple of hours passed and Pedro emerged from the sea bearing a bag of twenty lobster tails – the rest of the creatures were discarded at sea - and I was invited to eat. Dinner was deep-fried lobster tails for me, tortillas and Cup o’ Noodles all round washed down with Nescafe and the vodka I’d produced from Cargo Bay Three, mixed with coconut water which goes very well indeed. Pedro and Eduardo being Evangelists do not drink (saved from bad habits earlier in life by Dios, I must have heard this story a hundred times) but Pancho more than made up for it. He is an Evangelist too but “not a good one”. We ate seated on gasoline cans around a battered cable spool for a table and thrashed in the intense mosquitos; the typical half-assed mosquito shelter they had made was worse than useless, I swear there were more bugs inside than out. I emerged for another coconut from time to time. Pedro demolished the most enormous plate of fried fish and most of a kilo of tortillas at gustatory athlete speed – he had been in the ocean for more than four hours without a wetsuit and was famished. His girth indicated that his regular input was something more than his output. I’d found him outside the reef, alone, in about three meters of water, at least a half-mile from land. This I think takes balls: they said that there are sharks which come and take an interest but normally do not bite, if they do it is by mistake because they have such poor vision. Cutting the lobsters in half does not attract them because “lobsters have transparent blood”, but when fish are speared then carried around in a net bag this is more of a problem. We told stories, had a long talk about Dios. I don’t agree with them but the innocence of their position is endearing.
Pedro actually lives in Chetumal 200km distant and has a wife and children. He spends the six months of lobster season in this isolated spot, two weeks on, three days off, snorkeling for four hours a day. He does not own this piece of land, it belongs to “some rich guy” who does not bother them. They cannot sell the lobsters live because town is a long way off and if they stored them in a cage they would be stolen whilst unguarded, so only the tails are sold, run to the nearest town by Pancho who lives in in the presumably buggy village of Mosquitero to the north, on the bike. I had never eaten lobster before and they were pretty good. It’s just a big shrimp isn’t it really?
Six months ago a lone Cuban passing nearby had to jump overboard to fix his ailing propeller. A shark bit him on the thigh. He survived two days at sea with this injury, managed to row to land but died of the infection. Poor bastard.
A month ago an Englishman in a yacht went up on the reef a few miles to the north. He immediately jumped aboard another yacht and disappeared, leaving the whole vessel to the locals. This is considered very suspicious. Da Vinci had a sail from the wreck.
Three years ago a monster came out of the ocean and went southwards along the beach, leaving no prints. There were several witnesses. The best I could understand was that it resembled ” the ghost of a pirate under a tarpaulin”. I do not know what to make of stories like this. I suspect it my have been a Cuban who swam in from a dying boat carrying whatever he could.
That night the mosquitoes were unbelievable, coating my net and finding their way through tiny gaps around the bottom of the Asphalt Shack’s frame, but it was not so bad. My folded towel makes a pillow the size of a slice of a small stack of toast. Mmm, toast.
In the morning I was invited to breakfast and we went first to da Vinci’s hut. He had just finished butchering a sea turtle which he’d found in his net.
I am tired of the turtle issue. The people of this coast eat them whenever they think they can get away with it, despite the draconian punishments that are possible. This creature was small, the shell a foot or two long, it had probably drowned in the net but I did not ask. There was a lot of meat. I weary of arguing about this with people, they do not understand me, it makes no difference. And I have to confess they have a point – there seem to be a hell of a lot of turtles.
What to do? Refuse hospitality? Rail against eating an animal which was dead anyway? I couldn’t bring the thing back to life, nor was I paying anyone to kill another. They say they don’t eat them daily but often, yes. I sighed and ate deep-fried sea turtle for breakfast. What the hell am I coming to? The stuff was delicious, something like chicken, white and dry but tender, no fish taste. I am a very bad person and a criminal. I’m so sorry Mr. Froog.
Launch, onwards. Forty kilometers or so took me to Mahahual. On the way I saw my first lancha in a couple of days so so I approached for a gab to find to my astonishment that it was piloted by a beautiful blonde woman. I had never before seen any woman piloting a lancha. I heaved-to and crept close.
“You don’t look like a typical Mexican fisherperson”
” Neither do you”
” Yes I get that a lot”
She worked for a company doing reef surveys and had divers down. I said farewell and sailed onwards. Despite the existence of Crumpetina it is hard to leave a blonde alone at sea. I am just a man.
Mahahual. ”A little drinking town with a diving problem”. An attractive place with a small beach and a big pier touting two enormous cruise ships one of which sounded its horn as I passed under its bow, a noise fit to stun a rhinoceros, kind of thrilling. These ships appear two or three times a week and the passengers come ashore, enjoy the land, reboard and vanish leaving Mahahual very quiet again but for the local populace and a few diving and fishing tourists. I pulled ashore looking for the establishment of Dr. Primo who had very kindly invited me to visit via this blog, but my timing was bad and he was not around. I had a beer at the excellent and most friendly Nohoch Kay restaurant where I had beached because of the presence of the Nohoch’s rental Hobie cats and found that my money was no good there. Owner Jaime is a most hospitable fellow who welcomed and pampered me and was all in all a great guy, I wish him the very best and his staff as well. That night I watched mystified as a man unreeled most of his line on the wide concrete dock in a zig-zag pattern, then he stood on the edge and whirled his weight in a 16-foot vertical circle and heaved it out into the dark, the zig-zag line flying easily off the concrete. The weight must have gone 100 meters or more. Later the boat kept banging the dock in a most distracting way so I had to pull out into the dark and anchor, then I slept a little.
I’d forgotten to check the weather on the net but it looked fine out there, a very light breeze, so I left the big sail up and headed out. After my morning Yard o’ Poo I turned south. This turned out to be a bad day to be at sea.
In an hour or so the wind started to freshen. It went from bad to worse with big swells coming up behind me to make me surf down their faces. Since they were hitting me diagonally on this tack I had to surf them with the ama on the downhill side which risked it plunging way under and tripping the boat, although this has never actually happened things got a bit worrying. I like the surfing normally but it was getting a bit out of hand this time. As the wind started to clock around to the northwesterly I changed tack and that let me surf with the big hull downhill, which was better, but things were getting hairier and hairier. At first the swells were moving much faster than the boat so the surfings would be brief, but as the wind freshened further I sped up and surfed for longer and longer spurts, the boat racing along at an alarming pace, charging over and through car-sized lumps of water, great black (it was overcast) swells rearing up behind me to three meters, occasional 4-meter freaks lifting me to commanding heights with deep pits opening in front into which I would plunge, the GPS now hitting 12 knots over-the-ground despite the back-current. I sat sideways the better to see in front and behind but after a while decided it was better not to look back because each approaching mountain frankly scared the crap out of me and I didn’t want to know, the adrenaline was too much. Most of them passed harmlessly below no matter how bad they looked.
Where was Xcalak, the next town down? I was going so fast it must surely be soon, but no sign. As I surfed forward some of the wind pressure would come off the sail and with such little force from the side the sail would collapse (yard and boom coming together) and fall inboard across the bow which could lead to the spars getting hooked over the top of the mast, an ugly prospect, so I started to zig-zag to keep pressure on the sail but that was not so good as it is better to surf perpendicular to the big waves. I finally saw some smoke on the horizon – Xcalak? Oh please! I had the option of crossing the reef to land on the beach but after my experience north of Tulum I was saving that one as a last desperate measure. In fact I carefully edged away from the reef in case I had a rigging failure and needed time and searoom to fix it. So it was Xcalak or bust but this last half-hour things got so crazy at times I doubted I’d make it, I was charging along, soaked, the deck completely under sometimes, my hat gone, fighting with rigid concentration to keep my course and control and becoming increasingly alarmed. If I wavered from a run to a broad reach steering would become almost impossible due to the excessive weather helm on this point of sail, exacerbated terribly by my big sail, so when this happened I’d be slewn around broadside to the weather. The only way to get back to running downwind was to sheet in, build up speed then completely let go the sail, steer hard leewards, then try to get the sail sheeted in again before it fell across the bows. The stress on the rudders during these turns was awful and I was very worried that something would give – without steering I’d be fucked for sure. But Deseperado is made of stern stuff to my never-ending amazement and nothing broke. That quina hardwood of which the blades are made is some good shit as is the marine ply.
Anyway, onwards really really fast. Xcalak came into view but the reef was pretty much continuous here and worryingly so. I was considering breaking out the VHF walkie-talkie to ask for advice with little hope of understanding the replies, if any, when I saw a lancha outside the reef. YAHOO!
Jorge, in full raingear, was circling around in the lumps with consummate skill. I approached and grinned. Might as well pretend this kind of thing happens all the time and I’m cool with it. He had divers down, he yelled over the howling. We went up and down, up and down. He said his divers would be up soon and I could follow him in through the reef. Phew. Salvation.
I hung around, heaved-to in the mountains, tensioned the mainsheet just enough to stop the sail flogging violently, got out the Go-Pro head camera for the ride through the reef and stood on the deck admiring the sea, which was impressive, magnificent and very menacing indeed. It wouldn’t look that way on camera of course, it never does. Sailors say the best way to reduce the size of the waves is to point a camera at them. On camera it looks always looks like a millpond.
Divers started to appear and looked at me astonished and I was like, just hanging out you know? I do this all the time, sure.
The divers eventually got aboard and Jorge waved me forward. I was now on a broad reach with steering difficulties and having a hard time, but it was better than surfing. We ran for a tiny gap in the reef north of the town, the divers shivering but with all their eyes glued to the spectacle behind them. Through the gap, no trouble, I may safely say I experienced a feeling of relief at this point, then through a maze of coral heads with steering trouble but no impacts, then a shunt and a fast run southwest to land. I ran Desesperado up on the beach and sat and enjoyed still being alive.
Xcalak is a quiet and poor place, dirt roads, palms, miniscule beaches, eight year-olds driving mopeds. The people are calm and only mildly interested in my boat and journey. Real Mexico here. A few men came to check out the Desesperado. They often ask if I am afraid of sharks attacking my little boat. No, I am afraid of reef and big waves. They claim that there is a type of shark that attacks the motors of lanchas occasionally, presumably only once per shark though. Often it completely escapes people that there is no motor – they don’t notice the sail when it is wrapped around its spars on deck, and then they think that the rudders are oars and I am some kind of rowing nut. Waterworld, Captain Jack Sparrow.
Xcalak.
Cuban escape boat at Xcalak. Weirdly high-sided (five or six feet), made of very thin glass fiber and roofing metal and powered by a car engine cooled with straight sea-water delivered through very dodgy plumbing. A one-shot disposable boat. They made it I guess.
The next day I took off, sailed south a few miles inside the reef and belted through the Zaragoza canal, a 500 meter cut in the land allowing access to the lagoon behind. Soldiers at the canal entrance waved at me to stop but not until I had already passed and in this narrow space with my crappy small sail up, plus a strong current I could not tack back to them. I tried for a bit but my heart wasn’t in it then I threw up my hands and carried on. The soldiers did not did not pursue. Behind the canal a lagoon opened up with low scrubby sandbars and shoals, mangroves, herons and whatnot, Belize to my left, Mexico to the right. I crossed 40 or 50 km of featureless greenish Bay of Chetumal to Chetumal, tied to the public pier, had to check in with immigration and pay to moor, kinda uptight here. Cars drive out on the pier then stop where I am moored, the only boat on a 150-meter pier, to goggle at Desesperado. The pier guards are friendly enough towards me but cars are not allowed to stop on the pier and this is taken this very seriously – I said they were uptight – so they have to walk down the pier from their office each time to order the vehicles into motion again and I think it is wearing them out. A sign says ” Beware of the Alligators” so I don’t swim in this murky lagoon water. Not even for my trousers.
I walk the streets of Chetumal as always lugging my electronics and other valuable valuables in my submersible bag. It rains here so this bag is useful off the boat as well as at sea. This is quite the noisiest place I have ever experienced… I had the misfortune to arrive on a Saturday afternoon and could hear the place booming from about 8km out, a bad sign if you are me, which I am. I walked up the main commercial street through the worst cacophony ever. About every third store has big speakers outside blasting and shrieking and pounding music. Over this a person with a microphone is often ranting like a minister about their wares. This could be a shoe shop, a pharmacy, a bank… Here and there on the wide street a tent is set up before thirty or so chairs and a man with a microphone stands in front of maybe six sitters and yells about something, thundering out of his speakers at a volume fit to strip the lichen off a boulder. I wince. A cactus would wince. But the sitters seem completely unperturbed. The only way to not hear music is if it is drowned out by some other music. Cars thump by, their huge stainless “mufflers” deafening, an open-sided double-decker tour bus goes around and around with its speakers taking up the whole rear end hammering out crap. Cars with speakers or megaphones on their roofs drive about blaring recorded commercial messages. Much of the music is the whiny kind with the semi-synthesized voices which I love so much. A fair was set up, with a main stage doing some kind of ghastly Christmas show with Santa and big rabbits dancing about, lots of refrigerator-sized speakers with this outfit. And fireworks. There are so many firework sellers on the streets that I fear some Dresden-like firestorm cataclysm may befall Chetumal.
Imagine you are inside a giant Coca-Cola can ten stories high. Put inside a dozen steel water tanks, a few cathedral bells and a dumpster load of cannon balls then roll the whole shebang down a lumpy hill. You will now be experiencing peace and quiet, a calm day by a slow-moving river with some hummus and a bottle of Merlot, in comparison to Chetumal.
Desesperado at Chetumal.
And now I must decide. Desesperado is in much the same shape as when he left Veracruz, improved if anything, and I myself have a few more gray hairs but am otherwise in great condition and ready to keep sailing. Do I go on towards Panama where I may have work of a kind? Head back to Veracruz? Sell Desesperado? Ask for rescue by a friend with a trailer? This has to be one of the hardest decisions of my life.
The day after Crumpetina’s lovely visit ended I rather sadly set sail from Isla Mujeres. No more $4 per night hotel room, no more breakfast biscuits at Barlitos. The wind was light and I had to resort to anchoring exposed off the horrible thumping hotel zone of Cancun. Due to the current pushing me one way and the waves coming from the side I had a rough night – waves from the side strike the outrigger and then the main hull flat-on and the boat shakes and jerks so violently that I cannot lie on my side without being flopped this way and that – but at least the Asphalt Shack did not let in the copious rain. In the morning a school of little fish which had become fond of the boat in the night swam desperately along close to the hull until I had to leave them behind, so tiny and alone in the vast clear blue.
Just south of Cancun begins the reef; a couple of weeks ago when I passed here on my aborted attempt to go south the entrance was beset with breakers but this time it was clear and calm, however the dangers of the reefs were brought home to me by two vessels - a small sailing yacht and a big motor vessel - that had become grounded upon the coral. Woe betide the careless here. It appeared that the big motor boat was a salvage vessel sent to recover the yacht. Once behind the reef one still has to take care because of patches of coral and isolated coral heads that are especially hard to spot with the sun ahead and low to the south, reflecting off the water. This is quite stressful and adds to my general mental malaise, irrepressible anxious thoughts that rise to the surface like the fat in a stew and cannot be stirred down for long. I would quit this voyage now if I didn’t think I would regret it for the rest of my life, also this is one of the most lovely coasts in the world and it would be a shame to miss it. I intend to go no further than the end of Mexico, then I must decide on how to save myself and Desesperado.
The wind was weak and vacillating so I didn’t get far. About four kilometers north of Playa del Carmen I ground over a few rocks then hauled out on the beach at a vacant spot between hotels, discovering to my surprise I can now move the boat up the sand end-for-end whilst it is fully loaded – I seem to be getting physically stronger whilst mentally weaker. I had a delightful night with at least four hours of good sleep which sounds sarcastic but it really was nice. Sleep has been a luxury on this trip.
The morning, this morning, brought rain and strong winds so I stayed in bed thinking I would not sail today but finally out of sheer boredom I rose and packed up, changed down to the smaller sail then walked the boat out past the rocks, leapt aboard and blasted out to sea and southwards leaving a small crowd at a nearby hotel waving. With this howling wind behind me I made crazy speed towards Playa del Carmen and was soon soaked to the skin and wishing the sky were clearer and the sun higher.
I thought I would stop at Playa but somehow that didn’t happen. I don’t like the place that much and though my speed was frightening, the coral invisible under the chop and I was freezing cold I thought “so far so good” and carried right on by. I think a big factor in this decision was this – I was too afraid to be depressed! And busy too.
This stretch today between Playa Del Carmen and Tulum was the scariest and fastest of the whole trip. Conditions deteriorated as I went along, the barrier reef petered out leaving me on a broad reach in the open ocean with great swells lifting me high then dropping me into great pits, with confused smaller waves reflected off the land running in all directions. The wind increased, whitecaps everywhere and Desesperado plunged through wave after wave throwing up spray by the bucketload. Once in a while a little piece of my shirt would dry out enough that I could wipe off my sunglasses. The hotels on my right petered out with the reef and the coast became a low shelf of incredibly spiky wave-worn limestone beset with breakers, interrupted occasionally by small lagoons which might be enterable but for the reef strung straight across the mouth of each one. Breakers crashed across these reefs and though I might have had clearance I dared not risk it. The waves might lift me over – but they can also drop one down.
So I pounded along. I think for only about four hours or so. Then another bay appeared and this one had no end in sight. If I were to cross the reef could I sail along inside out of these crazy waves, maybe as far as Tulum, my target?
I piddled about outside the reef in an ocean which was getting madder by the minute, decided on a spot where the breakers were less. It didn’t look too bad. I shunted and headed in, regretted it as the swells behind reared up and twice bashed me sideways before passing by. I regained control and the next one lifted my stern so high I was at a 45 degree angle (I am not exaggerating, it felt like I was pointing vertically downwards) and we surfed down the slope at horrible speed, then the coral was flashing by close below and we slowed down and it was over. I was shaking from head to toe for the next twenty minutes which warmed me up pleasantly.
The inside of this bay is strewn with the coral heads so I was continually lifting my rudder and standing up to see ahead better. A good deal of the swells made it over the reef so it was still rough and there are areas of shoals covered in breakers through which I had to run, turning into the waves when I could to lessen their impact. One breaker caught me side on and completely covered the whole boat, ripping away one of my water bottles which I keep lashed above the outrigger as weight to help prevent capsize. This was the only loss of the day – all this battering resulted in no damage at all to Desesperado.
Only a few miles of this bay-hammering and I looked up at the cliffs to my right and was amazed to see Mayan ruins. This must be Tulum! Sorry, I had my hands too full to take pictures. A beach was coming up ahead; I landed and made instant friends. Papo unasked gave me a shoulder massage… he owns a lancha and knows the pain of steering long distances. I am glad I made the shore for the wind later became even worse and the rain returned to clear the beach of all tourists. After a couple of beers I hired a guard for the boat and was driven to the town of Tulum where I intend to have more beers and some food. I am famished. I’m going to eat now. This post is haphazard but it is done for the time being.
I decided I was going to have to put up with winds higher than I would like because they just never seem to stop. Sailors always say there is either too much wind or too little. So accordingly I set sail around lunchtime on Tuesday and made good speed on lumpy open ocean across to and then past horrible thumping Cancun. As the huge hotels, built on a scale that staggers me – I feel so small, a little fish – petered out I approached an area where the sizeable swells were rearing up over shallow water and coral. I had some idea that here an offshore reef started that would continue down the coast a ways offering a strip of sea by the coast between a half kilometer and 2 kilometers wide that was protected from the swell, an easy passage southwards. But first I had to get inside and this entrance was narrow and beset with huge breakers and I didn’t like the look of it at all.
Desesperado has the great advantage of remarkable speed. The bigger the waves the faster they go. With enough wind behind me I can outpace waves five feet tall or so, bigger waves will catch up with me and start to raise my stern so I surf down them at thrilling velocity, staying ahead as the wave crests and then breaks harmlessly behind. The trick is to wait for a set of bad ones to pass, then get up enough speed and maintain an iron grip on the tiller and total control through the charge. Heaven help me if I broach and trip…
So it went here through the danger area. After the worst I found my heart pounding so hard I thought it would do itself damage, and I was shaking from head to foot and ooh I felt so alive.
Inside the reef there were some coral heads to negotiate but I got around these and for the next few hours raced along on pretty flat water with the wind behind me and the surf crashing on the long barrier reef on my left. Sporadic huge hotels separated by low scrub and swampland passed by on my right. Not much in the way of attractive beach.
Towards dusk I anchored in the shelter behind a wrecked ship at Puerto Morelos. A police car glowered at me from the shore, but waited until an hour after dark and I was in bed to shine a spotlight on me and bellow through his PA that I was in a federal security zone related to a nearby shipping terminal and I had to go. I’d be damned if I’d take down my shelter (which due to its heavy and malodiferous coating of tar I now call “The Asphalt Shack” or ” The Roadhouse”) so I upped anchor and let the cold wind blow me sailess down the beach to a new and darker place. Later somebody else trained a spotlight on me and flashed it for ages but I ignored them and they eventually gave up.
Nights are always long on Desesperado but this one was particularly grim… I am constantly assailed by the worst thoughts about my situation, the wisdom of going on, my station in life, my past decisions… everything. Why do I make friends then move on? Why am I always alone? Why did I give my dog away? What am I doing? What am I going to do? It rained but at at last the cover worked, ninth time lucky with the waterproofing I guess.
More reef-protected coast southwards the next day. More huge hotels, tourists dotting the beach, shallow water, coral heads to avoid, dumbo jetskis, boat-towed parasails, dive boats, Hobie 14′s, beach bars. I thought I would like this coast but I do not: it seems like a vast tourist-processing plant absolutely devoid of character. Much of the beach is mundane with nothing to recommend it, so why build hotels there? The answer is money-laundering, everybody knows it, though I do not understand how it works.
I hit one coral head pretty hard but the boat ground its way quickly over to the other side and deeper water. The noise was horrible. I have not inspected the damage yet.
I have never raced an 18 but Hobie 14′s certainly do not stand a chance against Desesperado on any point of sail. I leave ‘em far behind. Jetskis I do not even wave to. I despise them.
The mad water activity increased as I approached Playa del Carmen whose beach was at least more attractive though it would be nicer without the continous wall of hotels behind it, and all the noise. I anchored in front of one blasting out the most horrible bleating whiny music I have ever heard “Oh I neeeeeeeed to be with you baaaaaby, ohhhh, ohhh…” Just pathetic. It was probably Craig David. No man should have two first names says Crumpetina. Who listens to this shit? I found myself averse to having the same old conversations about the boat so I quickly walked into town toting my most valuable valuables to find something to eat. I found this major tourist-processing facility quite without charm or character and as soon as I had some globitos I got back aboard and hauled up the anchor. I headed south towards Tulum.
Crumpetina is coming for a long-overdue visit on Wednesday, flying into Cancun. I was looking for a good place to entertain her but did not find in this coast what I expected, and did not like it as much as Isla Mujeres. If I continued much further south Crumpetina would have to spend a good portion of two of her seven days here on buses. Isla Mujeres is a nice place with all the character this coast lacks, plus I now have a few friends there and I know where I can leave the boat unattended safely. The wind was dead behind me, every kilometer I went south would require two kilometers beating back northwards… so right there I turned around and headed back towards Isla Mujeres.
I tacked (shunted actually) a few miles north before dark, spent another wretched night by some desolate swampland between hotels. The tide went down and at 3am I started to hit bottom and grind against the strewn lumps of limestone-upon-sand so I had to up anchor and sit, naked and freezing, as a cold westerly blew me out to deeper water. Well I wasn’t sleeping anyway. The next day the westerly continued blowing me close-hauled up the coast in fitful rain, then it clocked around to an easterly, more rain and cold, then a long becalming, and finally more rain and a nasty blow in my face beating across from Cancun to the island. By Cancun a park guardboat approached, said I could not fish (I was trailing a lure, not a bite on the whole trip) because it was a protected park of which I was genuinely unaware “But there are fishermen everywhere” I protested, which is true, both tourist and commercial, so it does not seem very protected at all. “They have special permits”.
Well, ok. I guess. It seems a little rough after a life of careful environmental responsibility including 26 years as a vegan that everyone but me gets to fish. Am I being entitled? Not for me to say. Anyway I threw the lure back over after they were gone and caught two fine barracuda near Isla Mujeres during a pretty bouncy and splashy ride. Desesperado performed magnificently as always throughout this trip.
So I am back on the island, waiting for Crumpetina.
Doubt. It is quite intense. I am tired. This isn’t fun any more. I have come a long way and want to do something else, but I knew that the fear and discomfort would cause me to think this way so I must fight my rationalizations towards quitting. I have several options about what to do next. I have kind of committed myself to some work in Panama starting in January. I would like to save Desesperado which means getting him safe somewhere. It is getting cold and severe nortes blow every few days. These factors make decisions difficult.
Option 1) Sail back to Zapote. Not too appealing, I have done this coast. With these winds though it might be a quick trip, 2 – 3 weeks perhaps.
2) Sail to Cuba, then up to Miami. Then go get my car and trailer from Mexico and drive the boat up to NY State from there. This means at least two long and possibly dangerous crossings, plus possible trouble from US authorities who just can’t get over something that happened before I was even born. Who voted for this? Anyone? I am not sure I have the energy to take on Cuba. And my salsa lessons went nowhere. I still can’t dance.
3) Try to sail to Panama. Virtually impossible to go another thousand miles or so before January, and frankly in my present state of mind I don’t know if I could survive the ordeal. At the very best I would have to rush along, suffering all of the difficulties and not being able to stop for the rewards. I dread all the bureaucracy of checking in and out of all those countries, that alone could take a month. Urgh.
4) Find somewhere to store the boat between here and, say Honduras, and return refreshed later on to continue the odyssey.
5) Stay here, find work, make a life. Isla Mujeres is a fine place.
Whilst I ponder these impenetrables I have a $4 per night room at the scabby Hotel Caracol, above the disco. It is ok but the gold filigree and inlaid lapis-lazuli is harsh on the eyes. I am trying to find an old sail from which to make a new and better one than the polytarp job that has pulled me so far. I do a little sailing when weather permits. The beach is still very pleasant; I adore David and Marcelo of Stand Up Paddleboard Isla Mujeres and Adriana of Mundaca Divers and Alina the Masseuse for the NaBalam Hotel and Mary Ann who has been so good to me, all are wonderful company. The busted rib is healing and I have developed the ability to climb coconut palms like a monkey. I accidently had a wave of positive feeling today but it passed. Phew.
I tried to escape today. More than three weeks of relentless high winds and rain were finally supposed to break today according to WindGURU. At least the wind was supposed to moderate and I was prepared to accept the rain.
(Actually we did have a weird calm day yesterday, so calm that no sailing was possible at all. I insinuated myself into a dinghy and spent some hours bringing yachts back into the harbor from the lagoon where they’d been sheltering from the tropical storm.)
But WindGURU was wrong. As I loaded the boat another howler sprang up which went on most of the day, to be replaced by rain late in the afternoon. I lashed the heavy log on over the outrigger and went out anyway but with the deck constantly awash and the platform frequently inundated sufficient to nearly sweep me overboard it was just too stressful and I ran back to the beach after a half hour and concentrated on throwing ropes over coconuts to pull them down with. After all this forced inactivity I am in a weakened state and can no longer climb the trees; the broken rib doesn’t help much either.
There is nowhere so lonely as a place full of happy people you don’t know. I am going out of my mind here, and whilst continuing my voyage also does not really appeal I am prepared to do it just to get the **** out of here whilst I still have any motivation left at all. Anything but more thumb-twiddling tedium, wandering from place to place, eating too much, drinking not enough. It is sapping my strength. I remember so fondly all those little villages I visited on the way here and how easy it was to fill the time just by joining in with whatever the fishermen were doing. I’ve managed a little volunteering here but have found nothing substantial enough to keep me amused. I suck as a tourist. Years ago I swore I would never again visit a poor country as a tourist – I would need to be working or on an expedition – but now I have become a tourist again by default and I really don’t like it.
Sorry, I am bitching. You think I am in the Caribbean and should be having a great time but the weather is more like something from the Outer Hebrides so the Caribbean aspect is absent and this has gone on so long it is getting very hard to be philosophical about it.
A light at the end of the tunnel! Crumpetina is coming over in 16 days! YAY!
El Milagro Marina owner Eric Schott caught this as headed into the lagoon ahead of the expected hurricane. There's a log beside me on the platform as an anti-capsize measure because despite the apparent calm there is a strong wind blowing, enough to make me wear the life jacket for the first time. This photo is distorted - stretched sideways - the boat is not that long nor I that wide.
The storm hit late last night, lots of lightning and rain and a howling wind that bent the palms over and strung out their hair like girls with their heads out of a car window, but there was little effect upon the buildings. It was dramatic enough for me to say that if this was just a tropical storm I am no longer sure I want to experience a real hurricane. The power went in and out and finally died for good and I fell asleep with my wet clothes strewn about the room. This morning I woke to an overcast sky with little wind and a flat sea, the ceiling fan turning again. Kind of a big fat nothing’ the whole deal. There are some leaves and branches on the streets, some minor coconuttage, folks are unboarding their windows and getting back to normal though with little prospect of doing business until the tourists return. I sense relief but some slight disappointment that all the preparatory work was wasted.
The forecast is still terrible, strong winds for a couple of days and continued rain and thunderstorms for a week; this is getting tiring. I may have to take off in the rain because I can’t live with this waiting much longer.
