We had planned to sail from West End to Guanaja with some stops in French Harbour and Port Royal. The weather forecast, though, predicted increasing winds from the east. We had about 10 knots on the nose when we set out in the morning two days ago. By noon we had about 15 knots and decided to take the chance and go back all the way to Guanaja today. This was a good decision. About 8 miles west of Guanaja it started to become uncomfortable. We arrived just in time to drop the anchor and praise the setting sun with a glass of chilled white wine.
It feels good to be home again. And it feels good to see the white caps from the hillside instead of beating them. It is blowing hard right now and will be for the next few days.

We had a wonderful, carefree month in Belize and enjoyed the cruiser´s life again. At least for a little while.

I will close this blog now, it´ll be inactive for -who knows?- months?
I let you all know when we resume cruising.
Thanks for sharing our stories!
Love to you all!

We are on our way back to Guanaja. We had hoped to have a 10 knots wind from the north-east to sail back easily to West End, Roatan. But the wind was very very light and more easterly than predicted. We had to turn on the engine but had a calm trip back.
We plan to rent a car to get an impression of the island and how it changed within the last five years.
We will report.

Before we head back to Honduras tonight we tied up to one of the moorings right above the edge. Bernd pulled me up the mast from where I took this picture.

The wind died down completely and now we enjoy the calm waters, the good visibility and still a lot of diving.
We met cruisers here we were supposed to meet in the Vivorillos. What a surprise to see them in Belize!
They have a motorboat and invited us to a daytrip to the south end of the reef. We had a wonderful day, enjoyed the view from a bridge that is much higher than our boat. A new perspective for us. We did some diving while the other folks went spearfishing - and provided us with a big chunk of snapper filet. We chatted, had lunch together and -well, just a beautiful, carefree day.

The underwater world of Glover´s Reef seems to be beautiful. We snorkelled and found amazing coral gardens with a lot of fish. Diving however was not possible for us as the wind was blowing hard and all the dive sites in the vicinity are too rough to go with our little dinghy.
So we decided to sail 35 miles north to Lighthouse Reef. It was a rough ride as the swells were pretty high. But we enjoyed a full day of sailing.

Lighthouse Reef is another atoll and a steep and dramatic drop-off on the leeward side of Long Cay. This means you anchor behind Long Cay and from there it´s only a short dinghy ride to one of the best dive sites in the whole caribbean (at least I think so...). Lighthouse Reef is also home to the famous "Blue Hole". Divers know what I am talking about. Surrounded by shallow water of about 10-20 feet it is a 450 feet deep round hole within the atoll. The best view is from the air though. The diameter of that hole is about 500 meters. Diving, though, is not that spectacular. You do not find an abundance of corals and the water in there is pretty cold - only deep down at about 150 feet- you see big fish. We saw tunas and sharks.
Back to my favourite dive spot, the drop-off. We saw turtles, moray eels, lobsters, big groupers and all kind of small coral fish. And many stingrays. We could even see them at the anchorage. The water clarity was so amazing that I asked myself why I take the effort to put on all the dive gear at all. Just sit on board an watch down....

Glover´s Reef is one of the three atolls in Belize and -as far as I know- the only real atolls in the Caribbean sea. It´s a solid ring of living corals, about 15 miles long and 5 miles wide. There are six cays on the windward side and we are anchored behind the southern one which is called "Southwest Cay". The water is turquoise blue and crystal clear. We are looking forward to some diving.