Sit right back and you´ll hear a tale....

Well Lyds and I are back in Guatemala after a week long sailing trip through the Belize Islands. It certainly was a quite an up and down trip to say the least.

The voyage set sail from Rio Dulce, right near where the orpahange was. We had a pre-trip lunch at the Sundog (of course) before we left and as it turned out quite a few of the other guests on the trip were doing the same thing.

The first day of cruising was a nice calm sail up the Rio Dulce in blazing sunshine, which boded well for a good week ahead. The nighttime saw us all get acquainted over the few bevvies and our first of many delicious meals prepared by our cook - Elias. We were certainly a mixed crew - William from Belguim, Inga from Germany, Henneke from Holland, Scott&Anthea from Oz, Debbie from the US and Bernadette and Jacque from France. Things were looking good.

We set sail the next day in our 45f Catamaran and after a short stop in the Guatemalan Carribean town of Livingston, we headed out into the open seas and towards the Belize Islands. Unfortunately, the further we got out, things started to take a turn for the worst. The sun was quickly lost to the clouds, the wind picked up, and the sea swell got progressvely bigger and bigger. We didn´t really mind the rocking as it felt like a rollercoaster ride the whole way, but the lack of sunshine was certainly not going to be doing any favours for our tans....

After a long sailing day we made it to the calm waters of a little reef which included 4 tiny little Belize islands. Despite the dreary skies, the water was still a balmy 25 degrees plus so it didn´t stop as heading into the reef for a good couple of hours of snorkelling the reef.

Unfortunately for the next 3 days we were stuck of the reef as the weather was quite frankly - CRAP. High winds and on/off rain storms made it impossible for us to negotiate the tricky entrance in and out of the reef so we had to stay where we were. Even the Captain and crew had to admit they only really experienced one trip a year where the weather was that bad. Oh well, there´s nothing we could do about the weather. Thankfully the rest of the guests on board were a great crew and we all just made the best of the conditions. We read(a lot), played games, snorkelled, caught up on some long overdue naps, ate a sensational 3 meals a day chef including numerous freshly caught fish, crab and lobsters and spent at least an hour a day discussing weather conditions and how it was ¨definately¨going to improve...later.

One amusing story (now) is that for one of the meals we all were treated to lobster that the crew had caught on the reef. Given the usual price of lobster, free loster is a major bonus. I have never been a lobster fan but Lyds absolutely loves them. Well I figured it was time to try it again and see if I liked it this time. I managed to score a big one and encased in Garlic butter, it wasn´t that bad. I still wasn´t convinced though. I couldn´t finish it all so Lyds ended up having a bit of mine. As she was eating, she commented at the time ¨hmmn that seems a bit off¨. Considering I rarely eat lobster, I didn´t really have an idea. Well I certainly found out that night as I proceeded to bring it up over the side of the boat and the bugger gave me stomach cramps after every proceeding meal for the next 5 days. Even Lyds suffered for a few days just from the small bit of mine she had. It´s safe to say that I will not be eating lobster again for a looooooonggg time.

So after 3 days of the reef we got a small break in the weather so the Capitan made the call to high tail it out of there and we finally began our long journey back to Rio Dulce. Of course the bad weather broke as soon as we began returning. The positive is that at least we got one full day of fantastic conditions and calm seas out of the trip.

Overall it was still a pretty good trip and we´ve still got a good 5 months of travelling left so does a few bad days really matter.....NO.

Here´s some pics from the trip...


If you can´t see the above gallery, check out the link here - Belize sailing trip