The “3 Hour Tour”

Our trip from Guatemala to Belize was reminiscent of a famous story. In this tale a group of hardy adventurers went out on a fateful trip that started from a tropic port. This trip was supposed to only be a 3 hour tour, but they ended up shipwrecked on an island for years, and in the meantime they had to learn how to work together as a team and make the best of things.

We prepared to leave Guatemala on Monday doing all the last minute stuff getting the boat ready to go. We cleaned the boat, emptied trash, did last minute provisioning, and then anchored out off the dock overnight so we could leave first thing Tuesday morning.

First thing Tuesday morning Kim went to start the dinghy and the pull handle broke off. She took the top off the engine and removed the broken rope, there wasn’t enough to salvage. She tried to replace it with one rope we had on board but it was too big, then used another rope we had on board and put it all back together. Pulled again, and once again the rope broke.

Some friends came and got Kim and took her to the local Yamaha place and she bought another rope. She installed the new rope on the dinghy motor but didn’t have the handle to put on the rope because it had fallen overboard when she was fixing the dinghy, so we sent Ben to the store to buy another dinghy motor handle. He had to start the motor using just a little piece of rope to tug on. He was able to buy a handle, and return to the boat, but the last time he started the motor the rope got sucked back into the dinghy engine so in order to start it again we would need to take it all apart and rewrap the rope—this time attaching the handle to it. We decided we needed to get going, Kim had been working on the dinghy engine for 4 hours and it was now 11:00 in the morning. It would have to be fixed later.

We then motored down Rio Dulce to Livingston to check out of Guatemala. The weather and the canyon were beautiful.

Kim kayaked ashore to meet with the immigration agent, Raul. (the dinghy motor still hadn’t been fixed)

Raul and his nephew make the process of leaving Guatemala seamless, except for the sad part. Kim returned to the boat in tears, missing Guatemala already.

We left Livingston and crossed the sandbar at the entrance to the river without any problem. Our plan was to go anchor in Orange Point, Belize, just south of Punta Gorda where we could check in the next morning. The trip takes about 3 hours so we should have made it there there just at sunset. We turned north and had great wind, and decided to raise the sails. First we turned into the wind and raised the main, but the second batten came out of its pocket so we had to drop the main, that will need to be fixed before we can safely use the main again. We had 15-20 knots of wind so we raised the jib and motor sailed. The jib gave us 2 extra knots, so we were able to go 7.5 knots on a close haul (the wind at about 2:00 for you non-sailing folks). It is a lot of motion of the boat with water splashing up onto the deck, the wind in our faces, and quite a bit of fun.

We sailed for about an hour, all going well, until I looked forward and noticed that we were missing Ben’s windsurfing board and the inflatable SUP that we had borrowed from my friend Lisa in Key West. The kayak was still in the braces but just barely. Ben and I quickly hauled in the jib as Kim ran forward and started securing the kayak as well as all the other items on the front deck. Apparently she had been so enthralled with the river and then so emotional leaving Livingston she had completely forgot to tie down the kayak, SUP, windsurfer, as well as all the lines, fenders, and jerry jugs on the front deck of the boat. We turned the boat around and started backtracking, but by now the wind had picked up and so there were white caps everywhere, making it impossible to find a white floating SUP or windsurfing board. We searched for about 30 minutes, backtracking, using binoculars, and then decided we couldn’t continue searching like that. It was getting dark and we needed to figure out where we were going to anchor for the night. We could continue to Orange Point but that was an unfamiliar anchorage with shallow water on its approach and so not a good choice for the night. We found a little tuck-in near Livingston and tried to drop the anchor there but we were dragging and by the time we let out enough chain for the anchor to hold we were bumping the bottom of the boat in shallow water. That wasn’t going to work. We decided to go to back to Tres Puntas, which is about two hours east of Livingston, back in Guatemala. Although it was three hours away and would make it a long day, it was where we had anchored on our way down to Guatemala the first time–easy to find, easy to anchor in the dark, making it our safest option. I then turned the boat to start heading to Tres Puntas. We were now heading straight into the 25 knots of wind, and I was motoring into breaking waves. I then heard a loud clash and turned around and the dinghy davit that holds the stern of the dinghy had broken off. The dingy was vertical, hanging only by its bow, dragging its stern including the motor through the water. I tried to slow down, but honestly with the lee shore behind me I had to keep going forward into those waves and didn’t have much room to maneuver. Kim ran and dropped the bow of the dinghy down and then tied the dinghy to the back of the boat so we could tow it. One of the kids was on dinghy duty, watching the dinghy at all times to make sure it wasn’t taking on too much water. The gas can had broken loose and made the stern heavy on the dinghy, making it hard to tow has it dragged through the water, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it at that time. I briefly took over dinghy duty, and I saw that our last dinghy oar was barely hanging on, and then, just as quickly, it was gone. Emotionally we just couldn’t lose another thing so we did a MOB drill. I kept the spotlight shining on the oar, Kim steered the boat, and Benjamin was able to rescue that oar out of the water. We made it safely to Tres Puntas at 10:00 that night. Exhausted and emotionally drained we anchored the boat and collapsed. As Ben reminded us, when sailing the highs are much higher, but the lows are much lower.

We got up early the next morning. Kim replaced the broken pin on the dinghy davit with a shackle and so we were able to hoist the dinghy. We decided to make our way to Belize by closely following the coast hoping that the windsurf board washed ashore. The board was Ben’s Christmas present, and he was so looking forward to using it while at anchor in Belize. We crossed to Livingston and then followed the coastline staying just offshore in about 10 feet of water, following every nook and cranny looking with binoculars in hopes of seeing the board. After two hours Kim saw something that looked suspiciously like the board. Having the better Spanish skills I kayaked to shore only to find that what we were looking at was actually just a white pipe. But a man on the coast told me to keep looking north in that cove, that that was the direction most things washed ashore. I kept kayaking along the shore. I came upon another house that had a man in the backyard. He approached me at the shoreline and I explained that the reason I was kayaking so close was because I was looking for a board that had fallen off our boat the afternoon before. He motioned me to come ashore and took me to his house. There on his back porch was my friend Lisa’s SUP! He had found it on the shore in his yard that morning and drug it up to his porch. This re-energized our search, and Ben took a turn in the kayak, but we never found the board. We realized that with this many miles of coastline if someone had grabbed it and taken it ashore the chances of us finding that board were slim. By this time it was starting to be mid afternoon, we were hot, and the wind and waves were picking up so we decided to call off the search and head for Orange Point.

As we headed to Orange Point Ben and I decided to motor sail again and raised the jib. We had just got the jib perfectly trimmed when suddenly I heard the loudest sound. I looked and the jib was luffing like crazy.

“Kim, the jib!” I yelled from the helm seat.

“Fall off or trim it in, it’s luffing”, she answered, not looking up from the iPad.

I knew we hadn’t had a wind shift or changed our course to explain the luffing. “No, you have to look, there’s something’s wrong!”

Kim got up and yes, the jib was luffing like crazy which is what was making that noise. She looked up and saw that the halyard was no longer attached to the top of the jib (the rope at the top of the front sail and pulls it up the the mast). We were unable to furl it so we just dropped the sail on the foredeck. Kim was trying to carefully flake (fold) the jib but we were pounding into 17 knots of wind and waves. So Kim, Ben, and I just folded the jib into a big ball and put it inside the boat, out of the way.

That was the end of our second day. We anchored that night at Orange Point exhausted and emotionally drained. We raised the yellow Q flag, but what we really wanted to raise was a white flag of surrender.

We woke up the next morning to a beautiful sunrise and decided to make some repairs before driving around the corner to Punta Gorda to check in to Belize. I prepared to go up the mast in the bosun’s chair to see what happened to the jib halyard.

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I ended up spending 4 hours in the bosun’s chair. The halyard (rope that pulls up the sail) had broken off in the mast and although I was able to find it I couldn’t get it free. I made a new messenger line with fishing line and some sinkers. I then went to the level of the spreaders where there is a hole in the mast the size of a quarter. Using a penlight I could see the jib running through the mast. Using alligator forceps as a needle driver with some whipping twine I was able to pull out some of the rope. I then attached what I could to the fishing line I had run through the mast and then was able to pull the rest of the jib halyard free. Honestly it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I hate heights, the boat was rocking back and forth, I had limited vision with the penlight and alligator forceps taking up most of the room in that quarter size hole in the mast. I had to sew fishing line to rope inside the mast with barely enough room to even get my tools inside. I felt like a cross between a vascular surgeon (tying small things together) and OBGYN (doing large projects through a small opening).

While I did surgical repair of the jib halyard Kim worked on the dinghy. She was able to put a new pull handle and line on it and with a lot of tinkering and starter fluid was able to get the motor to start after being dragged through salt water.

We then took the boat to Punta Gorda and checked in with Customs and Immigration. The first question we were asked was, “I see you checked out of Livingston on Tuesday, it is Thursday afternoon. Why did it take you two days to make a 3 hour trip?

One of my favorite movies of all time is, “What’s Up, Doc” starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. There is a scene at the end with all the players in the court and the judge asks them what happened and they all start talking at the same time, each telling a more outlandish story. That was us. We all started answering the customs officer at the same time: the dinghy motor lost its pull handle, the batten in the main came loose, the jib halyard broke and got stuck in the mast, the windsurf board was lost overboard, the dinghy davit broke and the dinghy and motor were dragged in the water. He just looked at us like we were crazy, and stamped our paperwork. Welcome to Belize.