West End to Glover's Reef

It is about time I go back fill in the information I keep promising to write, but haven't. First up: the trip from Roatan to Belize.

After enjoying the beach scene at West End, we decided it was finally time to keep moving on our way. We waited until we had what we thought would be a relatively easy passage-the winds had been pretty light in the days leading up to our departure, so we thought the seas would be relatively calm. Needless to say, we were wrong, but that comes later.

We were leaving from West End and headed to Glover's Reef, one of the off shore atolls of Belize. The tricky piece was that we had to travel about 70 miles. Traveling at 5-6 kts, that makes it roughly a 12 hour trip. When traveling in these waters you really need to enter and exit harbors with good light. There are reefs and coral heads in just about every harbor and you need to keep a good lookout to prevent running into something. There aren't 12 hours of good daylight (dawn and dusk aren't light enough), so a 70 mile trip presents a problem. Our answer was to leave our mooring in the harbor around 3:30 in the afternoon. We passed through the reef, and temporarily grabbed a dive mooring on the outside of the reef. The plan was to hang out there, eat dinner, take a nap, then leave around 10 or 11 o'clock for a mid morning arrival the next day.

The plan was a good one. Unfortunately outside the reef was so rolly it wasn't a comfortable ride. In fact Jigger threw up at the mooring. Not a good sign. We did eat dinner, but then by 6:30 decided to heck with it, we'd leave.

What was unpleasant swells on the mooring turned into even more unpleasant waves and swell in the open water. Once again we were expecting SE winds, but the winds and seas were coming from more ENE than anything else so we were catching them from behind on the starboard side. Everytime a swell passed by we'd roll over the wave and then roll back on the other side. We started out with just the genoa, but eventually pulled out a partial main to try counteract the slip slop side to side. As evening turned into night, I couldn't decide if it was better to see the waves, or not. Probably not.

At some point, around 10pm or so, I had my meltdown.

Whether it was the cool night air, whether it was muscle fatigue from just trying to stay in my seat, or whether it was the state of the seas I don't know. All I know is I started trembling. Andrew came up from below and asked the standard question, "Everything ok up here." This time my answer was NO!!! I what I guess was an anxiety attack (panic attack sounds way too strong, but.) I was trembling and I couldn't speak. I started stammering, "I...I.I.ca..ca.ca.can't.I'm...I'm.I'm..fri.fri.frightened.."

Meanwhile in my mind I was perfectly articulate. I kept telling myself to pull it together, Andrew needed someone on board who could stand watch. I didn't want him thinking he had to stay awake all night because I was a wreck.

We reefed the sails which slowed us down a bit and made the ride feel not quite so wild. Eventually I lay down in the cockpit and snoozed a bit. I couldn't sleep downstairs since things were banging around so much. We've learned that regardless of the forecast, we have to shove towels in any locker that has glass in it: the mugs and cups, the condiment jars, the liquor locker, etc. Things were falling all over the place, everything was clanking and rattling, and belowdecks was not a fun place.

After my snooze I was able to stand watch without spazzing, and Andrew did a heroic job with the cacophony down below. Later on we came about so the seas were now coming from the port side. The change of course slowed us down a bit, and added about 5 miles on to our trip, but for whatever reason the motion was more comfortable.

We got in to Glover's about 8:30 in the morning, and promptly took naps. Boy was I glad that was only a 70 mile passage!