Ghost resort

Wind gods move in mysterious ways especially when you are on a mission to get somewhere. We sat in the Rio waiting for Tropical Storm Sara to decic]de if she wanted to grow into a late season Hurricane. In the event she didn’t but hung around for days bringing flooding and damage to the Bay Islands and Belize.  By the time she went on her way we were left with fewer weather opportunities for the run up the coast of Belize, into Mexico and then onward to Florida for Christmas.

 Last year at around this time we were sat in Puerto Morales, Mexico waiting for a window to head southeast and the winds were SE for days and weeks. We ended up leaving on a marginal weather window and had a rough ride down to Utila. This year SE would have been perfect for heading North but the winds were – you guessed it –Northerlies and often strong. So we hopped up in short jumps mainly on the engine and head to wind and were forced to clear into Belize then back out again at a cost of over $500 US.

 This is the worst time for your dinghy to expire but our yamah engine stopped dead and the parts I need to fix it will not be available before Mexico and maybe even not until we get to Florida.  So anchoring will be limited and Marina bills will increase because we have no way of getting ashore other than rowing.

 We made the best of it but poring over weather charts each day only to be disappointed was not what we signed up for. The silver lining was finding Sapodilla Lagoon and the Marina at the reserve.

 This place is weird, it is a huge marina with all the infrastructure in place for at least 100 boats set in an even larger gated development with space for the same number of properties. But! It seems it was a money laundering scheme which came tumbling down when the owners were jailed. It’s now in receivership with a handful of properties, some very worried property owners and about 5 boats including Seminole Wind. There was a bar restaurant but the chef got shot and it closed. Fortunately we had provisioned because apart from a weekly veggie truck there are no shops and whilst we were told there is a clubhouse with a pool it was over a mile walk – with no dinghy we didn’t have the option of going through the mangrove canals.

 Having said all that we had a great stay but at the first opportunity we headed north again – more motor sailing into light northerlies.