20 April Blue Ground Cay to Glover's Reef via Southwest Cay

From an overnight stop in the inner lagoon at Blue Ground Cay we were embarking on what might be a bottom twitching motor to Southwest Cay on the outer reef. Belize has many shallow bars and patches and inaccurate charts. With a 2.1m / 7' draft and a tidal range of about 0.6m / 2' we planned our routes carefully. There's an app called Ovitalmap which allows you to cache Google Earth imagery to a tablet when or smartphone when you have internet and then when you're offline you enable the built GPS to navigate in the deep blue. It even allows you to add waypoints and record tracks. Highly recommended.

sunset at Blue Ground

Polly helps to navigate

Southwest Cay

I used Ovitalmap to pinpoint the darkest water to cross the bar into Blue Ground Cay from the inner channel. Used it to pick an anchoring spot and then for our four mile route to Southwest Cay. The cruising guide indicated a spot at 8'. Ooh! Skinny! And unforgiving coral. I found the area, extracted a waypoint for the narrowest point and input the lat long into the chartplotter. When we reached this point David was on helm (invariably he has the helm in tricky situations) and I was eyeball navigation on the bow (braced against the forestay in the event of coming to a sudden halt). We went over holding our breath with half a meter under the keel and a clear view of the nodules on each starfish. It was still shallow for the rest of the short trip, but the bottom was much more forgiving sand and sea grass.

We dropped the hook in a sand spot in front of the cay and took the dinghy ashore. It's Easter Monday and the island is busy with day trippers from the mainland. There's a marine research station which was closed today and the manager had invited all employees and their families for a day out.

At the northern end of the island is a resort with a restaurant. For the amusement we asked about dinner. Yes, they could provide a dinner of rice, beans, chicken or fish and the cost was U$35 each plus 12% tax and 10% tip! If navigating over shallow reefs causes you to hold your breathe, discovering the cost of eating out is a deep intake of breath. U$43 / £33 for chicken, rice and beans! Drinks extra.

After a tasty sandwich on board I went for a swim and checked the hull and prop. All OK. The north easterly afternoon breeze filled in and we had perfect conditions to sail the 14 miles to the southern anchorage on Glovers reef. Anchors aweigh!