It was early when we left Rio Dulce, 5:50 and quiet. Only a few fishermen in their dugout canoes were stirring. We had spent the previous evening with our marina neighbors Lorraine & Dan of Zephyrus sitting in Gypsy’s cockpit drinking mimosas, swapping sea stories, past lives, future plans and possibilities. Wonderful people! Again it’s hard meeting and then so quickly letting go of friends. They’re leaving Zephyrus on the Rio and heading back to their home base; a 26’ sloop in San Francisco for the hurricane season. And us, we’re still writing and rewriting our plans.
The day before the marina staff had smoked a hive of bees out of a neighboring boat’s mast. A couple of hours afterwards Susan noticed bees mysteriously appearing in our saloon. I started killing them but replacements would appear as fast as I could knock them off. I then stuffed a lit citronella coil in the base of the mast. That put them off. We were also still dealing with a horde tiny ants that were relentless in their desire to board Gypsy, many of then successfully. This is after all, the jungle where billions of living things compete for space and resources. A nearby boat had two large birds nests aboard and air plants growing on its headstay. One thing I’m not going to miss about the Rio, in fact was very much looking forward to leaving behind, is the feeling that I was a walking buffet, 24/7 for all sorts of things that were feeding on me. Was coming here worth it? Definitely! I’ll just be glad when the swelling goes down, the puss dries and the itching stops.
So it wasn’t with complete regret that we untied our lines, drifted away from the dock and slowly built the engine rpms as we headed down the Rio. As wonderful as this place has been, it felt like time for us to be moving on. The unsettled skies over El Golfete was a good match for my mood that morning as we passed through this broad section of the river.
It has been said that one never steps into the same river twice and that is certainly true of our trip down this one. The river was every bit as magnificent as when we went up it but somehow it wasn’t nearly as powerful for us going down as it had been coming up it. There’s something special and charged about a first encounter.
Lately we’d developed an uncanny way of running into people we know. We pulled into Livingston to check out of Guatemala and called Raul on VHF ch16 to enlist his services as an agent. He answered immediately; he’s so personable it was like talking to an old friend. As soon as we got off the radio with Raul, Maggie of Sea Tryst called to say hi. She and Bob were working with Raul to check in. We had never met them in person but had spoken to them over a year ago on the phone having been introduced by a mutual friend. What a treat to finally meet them in person. Unfortunately we were literally two “ships passing” so we didn’t have a chance to really get to know them.
When we finally got to Raul’s office he greeted us like old friends. He’s an impressive businessman and seems to have the offices of immigration, customs, port captain, health and agriculture all working as smoothly as a symphony orchestra. He had all our business completed, stamped and duplicated by 11:00, unfortunately low tide was at 12:00. So we decided to hang in Livingston for a couple of hours to let the tide fill in some in order to give us a little extra margin when we went back over the bar. So we decided to wander about town spend the last of our Quetzales while the tide built.
As we wondered the streets we ran into Philip who we had met three weeks ago when we checked in. We was as engaging as ever. We talk about where we’d been and what he’d been up to recently; organizing local Garifunas to help balance social injustice. He also spoke with much angst about; deforestation, the war in Afghanistan, climate change, over fishing and Guatemalan youth issues. Philip has keen intellect but I fear that he makes himself unhappy with his own unrelenting focus on local and world issues. None-the-less our meeting with him did feel like more that just another coincidence and I paid keen attention to his words and reflected on the significance of our meeting.
Back out on the boat we up anchored and headed out to retake our bar exam. We passed again but this time with even less margin than before, 6.1’ being the shallowest water we experienced this time.
It’s 63 miles from the Rio Dulce to Placencia as he crow flies but Gypsy’s no crow. She flies over waves but can’t fly over mountains, cays or reefs. She also can’t go straight up wind without tacking and tack we did. After everything was said and done, we ended up traveling a total of 90 miles to get to Placencia and it took us 22 hours in total.
In spite of the contrary wind direction we had a wonderful sail back to Placencia. Initially it was blowing 14-16 nmp out of the NE but soon built to 20-24 with 6’-8’ swells. We reefed Gypsy down and carried on. By late afternoon we got inside of Belize’s barrier reef and the seas settled right down and the sailing got very civilized. As the sun set behind the hills of Belize the wind settled down to pleasant 12-14 nmp range from the same direction. We then got a short rainstorm that had a remarkable clearing effect on the atmosphere. Once the clouds cleared we were treated to a crisp sky full of millions of stars with the Milkyway looking like a huge glowing mass above us.
It was extricating and challenging night sailing as we made our way past reefs, cays, unlit channel markers and ship traffic. It was even more exciting when we entered Placencia harbor in the dark. Fortunately the harbor has a wide entrance, no shoals and a generous and even depth of water throughout.
We pulled into Placencia at 4:30am and dropped our hook just south of a mixed group of sailboats; some with anchor lights, some without. The next day we checked in at Big Creek and enjoyed the friendliest and cheapest such session we had yet to experience in Belize. It had cost us only $25US to check in. When we originally checked in at San Pedro Belize it cost us $75US there and they messed up our paperwork. Checking out was the biggest difference. In Punta Gorda the port captain charged us $150US to check out, here we learned they charge just under $25US. Go figure. Clearly not all ports-of-entry are equal in Belize.
On our way back to Gypsy we were treated to two glimpses of manatees; one in the creek and the other right out in our anchorage. It was the first time that either of us had seen a manatee.
We had one more less-than-coincidental meeting when we got back to Gypsy. Gail and Lee came by in their newly repaired center console fishing boat. We had met them our last time in Placencia and Gail had gotten us started on the 100 wishes exercise, which we been having fun with ever since.
It’s good to be back in Placencia, it’s a lovely place, a meeting place and we have good friends that will be joining us on Saturday for a week of sailing.
