We left Placencia, Belize to see some of the cays between the mainland and the barrier reef. Our first stop was Laughing Bird Cay, which is a World Heritage Site and a Belizean park. The cay is named after the Laughing Gull, which used to nest on the island. The cay is a small sand island with palm trees that trends northeast to the southwest along a shallow reef structure. We anchored on the west side. The cay is surrounded by reefs from 10 to 30 feet deep, which makes for great snorkeling. We saw most the usual tropical fish that hang out around here, including several Goby fish, trunk fish, large rays, and a small nurse shark. While we were there, the wind blew out of the northeast, which meant the island did not provide much protection from the waves and the boat was bucking around pretty hard in the wave action. It seemed like we were at sea even though we were hanging off an anchor. After Laughing Bird Cay, we sailed over to Long Cocoa Cay. It is an uninhabited mangrove cay that provided good protection from the northeasterly winds. It also had some nice coral in shallow water. There were lots of small coral heads in less than 8 feet of water. Early this week, we are going to try to take our deeper draft boat up the Rio Dulce River in Guatemala. The bar at the entrance to the river has a controlling depth of about 6 feet at mean low water. Our boat draws 6.7 feet. We are going to cross at high tide and hope that adds some additional depth at the bar. If we get across, we will check into Guatemala in Livingston and then head up the river to the town of Fronteras.
Cayuse 