Sunriser

It is a long time since our last post as sometimes the ‘normal’ life occurances catch up with the sailing life.

Our trip from Mexico to Belize and Guatemala was interrupted because Beatriz had to attend family matters in Spain. So I set sail to Guatemala as a solo sailor, fortunately accompanied by our friends from Happinez and in Belize by our friends from Adventure.

The trip to Belize was at the end a bit too exciting. Navigating through a reef is normally already quite nerve wracking, but to do it as a solo sailor with strong wind and breaking waves was in hindsight not the best decision. However all went fine. Once behind the reef (Belize has the second largest reef after the Great Barrier Reef) the waves are gone and it becomes champagne sailing.

I passed the island Long Cay, where some 18 years ago I had one of my better fuckups with a boat. We were chartering a catamaran with our daughters who were 4 and 9 years old at that time. We went into a small water what looked as a one boat harbour, passing a sign with a skull on it, which should have been a warning. We went in, had lunch and when we tried to get out, the boat got stuck.

Pushed a bit harder with the engines…no movement…rolled out the genoa to push a bit harder…genoa tore into pieces as I rolled it out too fast..tried backwards….engines overheated because of all the sand in the water inlet of the engines. Fortunately we could contact the charter base. After 24 hours 2 people (a rigger for the sail and a mechanic for the engines) arrived by plane and boat together with a tugboat…

Losing our ‘own risk’ was not the traumatic part, but the remark from the basemanager was: “I would expect this from an American, but not from a Dutchman”. Now passing this place again smoothly helped a bit with handling this trauma.

I sailed through Belize, not stopping in too many places. The biggest difference with 18 years ago was the place Placencia. This little town had tripled in size and is now a touristic hotspot.

The sail to Guatemala is mostly behind the reef and with a good wind I arrived in Livingston on the Rio Dulce, where all the paperwork for Guatemala was done, helped by an agent.

For the buddy boat Adventure entering the Rio Dulce was exciting, as the bar of the river is only 1.5 meters deep at high water. So to pass this with a 2 meter draft keel a local boat specialised for this work, pulls the boat over more than 45 degrees. This way also deeper boats can pass. With its 1.2 meter draft, Sunriser does not have this problem.

I left the boat in Marina Nana Juana, a holiday resort some 50 kilometers up river. After cleaning up I went to NL.

And now, almost 4 months later, we are back. With 2 bags full of (spare-) parts it is time for some serious work on Sunriser as the last time has been around 2 years ago in Spain. Fortunately a local worker passed by and asked if we had work for him. We did!

The biggest job was to replace the solar panels on top of the steering cabine.

Other jobs involved cleaning, polishing and waxing the boat and installing new electronics.

We enjoyed the nearby village of Rio Dulce. Very alive and only a short tuktuk ride away.

For some upgrades to Sunriser we have to wait for some deliveries that should come this month. In the meantime we are going for some weeks on a road trip to explore Guatemala.