Oceanic Ventures, Inc.
The Strange Chronicles
July 2000
July 29, 2000 Friday, we sailed do the south end of Turneffe. It's a long island and the 30 nautical mile trip took most of the day. The winds were just about perfect and, since were sailing on the downwind side, the water was flat. We trolled all day. There is a lot of floating turtle grass so we had to reel our lure in every 15 minutes. and remove weeds. We were probably dragging grass half the time. Just at the time the winds piped up and I called for Karen to help me drop the mizzen staysail, we caught a fish. Lots of excitement - set the drag on the reel so the fish won't spool out all our line, release the staysail sheet and drop the halyard. Gather in the sail, secure it as well as the sheet and halyard. Ease the headsail, main and mizzen sheets to luff the sails and slow the boat down en to reel in the fish. Play the fish and continue tiring it so we can haul it aboard. Finally we pulled in a 3 foot barracuda. We don't care much for this fish and have been enjoying others recently so we let it go. Being one of the toughest fish on the reef - it swam away when we returned it to the water. Took us awhile to trip the sails and get the boat moving again. Not a bad way to spend half an hour or so on a Friday.
We're anchored right at the tip of the island. The breeze is a fairly steady 10-12 knots over the reef. The mosquitoes, that inhabit the mangroves on the main island, don't seem to be able to find us. However, exposed reefs are home to big black flies. They don't come around very often but they do bite. Happily they have to settle a bit first so you can swat them first. Keeps one alert during the day.
As we anchor, I always jump off the boat with snorkeling gear on to see what the bottom looks like and to insure the anchor digs in. Our chain had made a large loop around a small, isolated coral head and would have tumbled or otherwise damaged the coral as the boat backed and the anchor set. I dove down to lift the chain over the coral and discovered seven lobsters. They were cute little guys with ridiculously long antenna on six inch bodies. They were curious and afraid of me at the same time. I would put my face up to one, he would back into the protection of the coral pushing a couple of his siblings out the other end. They're almost too big for this home and will have to move on soon. Lobster season just started and they're way too small. Still they'd better keep their heads down for the next few months.
I swam around cooling off after the long day of sailing and exploring the local area. It's all sand and turtle grass. Not much reef structure in the immediate area - but we wouldn't have anchored here if there were. I swam over a large sandy area and saw tracks (Uh oh, sounds like another one of those disturbing the reef stories!). I know it sounds odd, but years of snorkeling and spearfishing have made me a pretty good tracker. These we're something different than the conch tracks I follow when we want fritters for dinner. I followed a set and found a nice big cushion sea star. These are beautiful starfish described as "thick, short arms, heavy body" - look them up. Rebecca has seen pictures of the sea stars that came to her first birthday party and has been asking me to find one since we got back to the Caribbean.
This one went into a bucket of seawater and attended our science class before being returned to the seabed. Having already performed the "lay the starfish on its back and watch the 15-20 minute turning over" experiment, I laid this one right side up. So, we saved the home of a family of lobsters and disturbed a starfish. I'll call it even for the day unless you count that barracuda we surprised
July 26, 2000 The washing machine works great - compared to a bucket and plunger. Place a small load of clothes in the container, pour in an amazingly small amount of precious fresh water and a hint of soap, screw down the lid and let Rebecca turn the crank. Easy as Squeezy as they say in Trinidad (Squeezy being the locally popular dishwashing soap). We also use the machine for rinsing. The first rinse turns into the wash water for the second load and, of course, the second rinse becomes the first rinse.
We all had another snorkeling adventure. This time in a shallow reef without many waves and little current. Lots of coral and colorful fish. Rebecca is especially fond of blues and yellows. We have a few flamingo tongues in our shell collection. Managed to find one on a nice purple fan, scooped it up and watched the mantle pull into the shell. I'm sure the ecotourist would object, but we live a lot closer to the sea than most of them and are fairly gentle dealing with the creatures unless they are coming home for dinner.
July 20, 2000 We're anchored off the small island of Cay Caulker, Belize. We'll be for a couple of days since the "Veggie Boat" comes on Tuesdays and Fridays, we missed the Tuesday delivery and we need some fresh produce. Another big attraction was the "do it yourself" laundry with nice big machines. Water is precious and electricity is provided by a single large generator so a load of laundry (just wash not dry) cost $5 Belize ($2.50US). You'd be amazed how much laundry Karen can cram into a single load of a commercial sized washer. She reasoned they'd certainly be cleaner than doing them in a bucket! (Or even with her new hand crank washing machine.)
One of the big tourist attractions is "Shark / Stingray Alley". Since we're always looking for activities for our onboard classroom, we got together all our snorkeling gear, a cooler with fresh water and apple juice and headed off for a field trip. Now before you get too excited, these are nurse sharks which are some of the most gentle and shy of the sharks. Like the stingrays, they've been "trained" by the tourist to mill around and be fed. We didn't have food, but the sound of our outboard was enough to bring them running. When we entered the shallow, six foot water behind the reef we slowed down and started looking. At first one ray showed up, then a few more and finally dozens of rays and sharks were milling around the dinghy. We pointed them out to Rebecca so she would have some idea what all the excitement was about before we entered the water.
The fish were clearly disappointed we hadn't brought food. They would come very close, swim around a bit then head off. After a bit they would turn and make another pass, always hopeful we would start feeding. With the various groups coming and going there were almost always a few rays and sharks around us.
Rebecca has been practicing swimming with her fins, masks and snorkel. She will occasionally put her face in the water to please her parents but hasn't been particularly comfortable doing it. Karen convinced her to duck under and get a look at a group of rays. When she popped up she was very excited. After that, we could hardly get her face out of the water. We've been swimming almost every day and she's gotten pretty good. Today she was all over the place, face in the water, breathing through her snorkel, chasing rays and sharks for all she was worth. Once in a while she would get a dollop of saltwater down her snorkel. She'd raise her head, pull out the snorkel, sputter a bit, shove the snorkel in her mouth, put her face in the water and off we'd go. She was so excited that she would swim off with no parent attached. We had to keep a close eye on her. What a blast! It was an incredible initiation to the world of life under the sea.