Exploring the Barrier Reef

Belize - home of the longest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere and second longest in the world. Lets go see!

Tobacco Caye - all of it!

We had been anchored right off the reef while visiting San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, but now we wanted to sail along the reef and visit some of the smaller cayes. Knowing our penchant to stay and stay we limited our adventure to three cayes. Two were sand and palm tree cayes right on the reef, the other was a mangrove group of cayes off of the inner channel. 

Belize is different from sailing in the Bahamas. There's some deep water channels that you can use to get around. So you can sail in 50 - 60 ft depths until you approach the various lines of corals and cayes. Another nice thing is that there can be wind with hardly any waves. So the "rages" you can encounter as you sail through reefs in the Bahamas don't happen in Belize, as you are always behind the barrier reef (unless you are sailing to the atolls, but that's a different story). Like the Explorer charts in the Bahamas, Freya Rauscher's Cruising Guide is your bible here. Her waypoints are spot on and she gives approaches, anchorages and descriptions of each caye. Of course, once out of the channel you need to keep a bow lookout and depend on your visual navigation skills. Until you are on the reef, the water is not as "gin clear" as the Bahamas. There's a lot of turtle grass bottoms which make the waters a dark green. The rules of this game are: No moving around at night, move when the sun is high in the sky and never sail west after about 3pm as the sun shinning down makes it impossible to see the coral heads. Watch out for the "brown bars", these indicate coral heads very near the surface.

$40 a night and a room over the water

We left Belize City on a cloudy day with a good chance of hitting at least one squall line. Our destination was Tobacco Caye out on the reef, about 28nm away. We could stay in the deep water of the Inner Channel for most of the trip. Then we rounded Garbutt Caye and worked our way through the middle cayes until we reached the heading that brought us right behind the island into a good anchorage with 10 - 12ft depths. Tobacco Caye is about the size of a football field. Tiny yet it has 3 small lodges where you can stay for $40 a night including 3 meals each day! Not any luxuries but the snorkeling, diving and fishing is superb. One of the reasons we choose this  caye was because 3 miles west is Tobacco Range, a much larger mangrove caye that if the weather turned nasty could be our hidey hole. Tobacco Caye and South Water Caye are part of the large Belize Marine Reserve. The charge to stay in the Reserve overnight is $2.50US per person per night or $15US for 10 days. Belizean citizens, like Roy, are not charged. 

How did we know the small boat pulling up beside us were park rangers coming to collect?
They wore no uniforms but they had on life jackets. 

Creative bar ceiling 

We anchored in grass to be close to the island for protection. (a problem waiting to happen). Can't see into the future so we went ashore to find a cold Belikin and get acquainted. Right off we fell into conversation with George who offered to take us snorkeling on the reef. Said he knew all the good spots. It took us about an hour to wander around and circumnavigate the island, that included about 45 minutes talking to others staying on the island. We arranged to eat with the residents at one of the lodges one night while we were there and, of course, we took George up on his offer. 

George and I 

The next day was a day to stay aboard as it rained and the wind blew like crazy all day. Seems one of those pesky tropical waves was moving across the Western Caribbean. Our restful day was disturbed when about 3 pm we realized we were adrift! Our anchor had dragged and the drag alarm had NOT sounded. Luckily it was daylight and we were drifting into deeper, not shallower waters. Roy was reluctant to start the engines as he didn't want the anchor chain or line fouling the prop so we just watched and waited. Finally the wind calmed enough and he started the engine and carefully motored to a sandy spot. Not as close to the island but the anchor would hold better.

(George said he was watching us and would have come to help if he thought we needed him.) 

Our last day at Tobacco Caye was perfect. Blue skies and clear waters all around. We met up with George at the bar and left immediately for a morning of shallow water snorkeling right on the reef while George rounded up 5 nice size lobsters for us to take back to the boat. The afternoon and evening proved a delight as it turned out Bob and Kevin, who we had met at the Belize Zoo, were staying at the same lodge where we had arranged to dine. So several rum punches later we went in to dinner (rice and beans, chicken and potato salad). There we met some grad students who were doing marine research and one of the girls had attended Loyola New Orleans for her under-graduate degree and, of course, studied under our old friend, Dr Bob Thomas.

Looking out to the reef at South Water Caye

The next morning started out lovely but as we motored the 5.5 miles south on the reef a squall blew up. It would have been a short hop over to South Water Caye, our next anchorage, except for the ever present squalls. We ended up spending another hour or so motoring slowly around and around as we waited for the wind and rain to die down so we could anchor. This time we made sure to find a sandy spot. South Water Caye is also on the reef but is a bigger caye then Tobacco Caye.The caye was named for the 3 fresh water wells found naturally on the island. I'm sure those olden day pirates knew about this spot. It also has 3 lodges but here you add a "0" to that $40. to spend the night at either Marlin Lodge or Pelican Point.

One of the fresh water wells

Cabin at IZE 

The third and most interesting of the lodges is IZE, International Zoological Expedition. While anyone can stay as part of their adventure packages, IZE mainly caters to student groups learning or doing research on the reef. Dr. Bob Thomas, from Loyola, was one of the originators. Students from high school to grad school come for programs that include Mayan and Garifuna Culture inland and Marine Research on the reef. We quickly found the bar at IZE (predictable aren't we). Marlin, the bartender not the lodge, became our "goto girl" for all sorts of information and even made arrangements for us to eat fried shrimp at IZE one night. We enjoyed meeting the teachers from Green Bay and their high school students and even got invited to a lecture on sponges. Next morning we woke up to bright blue skies and we found, all on our own, two lovely spots to snorkel.

You may know of our fishing issues but during our stay we finally perfected a method for catching fish and lobster. Any one is welcome to use this method. First keep a sharp lookout for a Belizean fishing boat, once spotted wait as they get closer, lastly hop in  your dingy and give chase. So far this method has netted us 3 snappers and about 4 lbs of lobster tails at a very reasonable price!

 

Pictures from the Reef

 

Our last anchorage was Bluefield Range, a grouping of mangrove covered islands. After carefully threading our way between some coral heads and 2 brown bars we anchored in the lagoon in the middle of the islands. Truly felt we were the only people on earth while we were here. Quiet, dark, lovely yet we still managed to lose our camera - overboard?? Can't understand it. Last thing we remember was taking a picture of a lovely sunset. Next morning wanted to video some dolphin playing nearby - no camera!

On that note we raised anchor and set sail for an 18 nm run to Placencia.

Can't give you that beautiful sunset - but here's a cute picture of Roy

Tobacco Caye Anchorage  16 53.90N   88 03.00W

South Water Caye Anchorage 16 49.11N  88 05.10W

Bluefield Range Approach 1 17 12.55N  88 06.22W

Bluefield Range Approach 2  17 12.64N  88 05.27W

Bluefield Range Anchorage 17 13.37N  88 05.46W