6/08/02 | Lighthouse Reef to Isla Mujeres

We're screaming along at 8.3 knots in a mere 11 of easterly breeze, courtesy of the Yucatan Current, the river of water that farther north, after it scootches through the Straits of Florida, is called the Gulf Stream. It's like a turbocharger, boosting us along. Just past 11:30 on Saturday morning, we're getting close to the southern tip of the Mexican island of Cozumel, and if all goes well we should make Isla Mujeres shortly before midnight.

The snorkeling at Lighthouse Reef was fantastic, with all the usual suspects:  groupers, spotted eagle rays, and a variety of snappers and jacks. One sea creature we haven't seen for some time is squid; we still haven't seen one, but while speeding the dinghy across the anchorage one day we must have spooked a squid or two, because we got inked! (Most of it just got on the dinghy's rubber tubes and was easily washed off, but Britt's shirt acquired a few new speckles.) We used our tanks on a scuba dive on the wall just outside Half Moon Cay, winding our way through channels and tunnels in the coral, and one morning we actually ventured to dry land. Half Moon Cay is a Belizean park and bird sanctuary, home to a couple zillion boobies and frigate birds, and about four times as many mosquitoes. From the bird observation tower we also observed a four-foot-long stripy iguana, munching on leaves and looking rather prehistoric. The island is also the base for a crew from The Nature Conservancy, who are working with a Belize conservation group on a fish study of the surrounding area. They showed us the radio and identification tags they're using to track grouper, to get an idea of their ranges; they are also counting fish and making note of spawning areas.

The day before we left, Venus Rising arrived. We'd been talking with Jeffrey, the owner, on the SSB, and had more or less made plans to head up to Isla Mujeres together. Before setting out on the big trip, we did a little trip together -- we dinghied six miles up through the inside of Lighthouse Reef to the famous Blue Hole. Britt and I had visited the Blue Hole on a scuba trip to Belize about ten years ago, and Jeffrey had been there on a scuba trip as well, but Cody, who was traveling north on Venus Rising (his own boat had been hit by a powerboat and sunk in the Rio Dulce a few months back) had never been here before. We snorkeled around the rim and free-dove to just below (except for Britt, of course, whose amazing lungs got him all the way down to the level of the stalactites).

We had been planning to leave the following evening, as the run to Isla Mujeres would most likely take about 35 hours; this would put us at the entrance in the early morning. But the morning weatherfaxes brought the ominous news that a tropical wave from further south was migrating north, joining to a low-pressure system already in the vicinity of Cuba. Tropical waves are non-circulating troughs of low pressure and tend to bend the wind, causing northeasterlies ahead (west) of the wave and southeasterlies behind the wave. As the wave headed our way, we could expect our east-to-southeasterlies to back to the northeast, which for our trip translates to headwinds. All this argued for a fairly immediate departure, on Friday morning instead of Friday evening. This would mean a night arrival, but Jeffrey had been to Isla Mujeres many times, and reassured us that it would be easy to enter after dark, and in any case we could follow him in.

Venus Rising, a Wauquiez 45

With ten to fifteen knots out of the east, we had a fast and pleasant sail up the Yucatan Peninsula. The crackling thunderboomers that had filled the night sky for the past week were almost absent; we spotted one squall on radar, but it dissipated before we got there, and we never got so much as a drop of rain on deck the entire trip. Our only difficulty came a few hours after I started writing this log (I should have remembered it's tempting fate to start describing a voyage before it's finished!) when we passed between the island of Cozumel and the mainland. The wind changed direction, funneling down the strait toward us, and the combination of north wind and south current made for steep, choppy seas. We sailed for the mainland coast, looking for less current and smoother water, then motored through the "noserlies" until we got out from behind Cozumel and back into the east winds.

Night had fallen by the time we neared Cancun, and the sparkling city lights made a better navigation landmark than any lighthouse. We fell in behind Venus Rising for the final approach to Isla Mujeres, and were glad of the assistance, because our electronic charts bore little resemblance to reality. Most of our non-US charts are not correctly "registered"; that is, the latitudes and longitudes that the chart passes to the navigation software are offset by some amount from the true locations. Usually that offset is on the order of a tenth of a nautical mile, but for Isla Mujeres the chart is off by close to half a mile. We also saw many more navigational lights than shown on the chart, but even the profusion of lit buoys could not compete with the lights on shore. Finding a flashing red buoy is much harder against a background of automotive brake lights! We followed Jeffrey and Cody in, managed to avoid grounding or hitting any anchored boats, and got the hook down and set at just about 11 p.m. Buenas noches, bienvenidos a México.

Lighthouse Reef, Belize to Isla Mujeres, Mexico:  258 miles, 36 hours (7 motoring) at an average speed of 7.2 knots, assisted by the Yucatan Current. Three stupid barracuda hooked, all released. Venus Rising hooked but lost a tuna.