May 30, 2015 Max White

A HIDDEN CORNER OF THE WORLD (RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA)

Beautiful Rio Dulce

Follow the birds

South ofBelize is a little known corner of the Western Caribbean. With the countries of Belize, Guatemala and Hondurus the Bay of Hondurus leads to the entrance of a beautiful, hidden river called the Rio Dulce. This river has become a popular spot for cruisers for years but we have just discovered it.Just a three-hour motor sail from our new home in Placencia, Belize we had a get away weekend to this spot recently. The entrance of the river has a town called Livingston where we are required to check in to the country. We first have to get over ‘the bar’. Not a bar for a cerveza but a sand bar that is 5’2” at low tide. With the draft on Gypsy Blue at 5’9” we needed to go over at high tide. The cruising guide seems to have fairly accurate coordinates and approach details. The seas were choppy as we arrived late afternoon and we could feel a soft touch on the bottom. Luckily it is soft sand or mud. We finally get through to the anchorage in front of Livingston. Unfortunately it is 5:00 pm when we drop anchor in front of the town of Livingston. It is too late to check in so we will have to spend the night in this rolly anchorage. Uggh! We hate rolly anchorages.

We wake up early to a misty morning with at least a hundred local fishing boats returning from their night of fishing. Such a beautiful sight to see in the morning. We put the dinghy in the water to see the Port Captain and all other officials so we are legal in the country and can head up the river. We are on a rushed schedule as we only have a few days for this trip. Our purpose is to take the boat out of Belize after 90 days and also we want to check out the Rio to see about bringing Gypsy Blue there for hurricane season this summer.

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May 23, 2015 John White

WHY I LOVE THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS!

1965 Age 13

It was 1962 when 3 American guys came to our local sand lot while my friends and I were playing Cricket in North Innaloo, Perth, Western Australia, the suburb where I grew up. They had all of this Baseball equipment with them. They were from the “Giants” organization and were out to promote Little League Baseball. I had been playing Cricket with the other kids in the area for years and soon we all converted to baseball. Two totally different games but Baseball gave every kid a more hands-on experience during the game. We ended up having 4 teams in our area. The teams were all named after American Indian tribes: Sioux, Apache, Kiowa and Shoshone. I remember it was so cool having a uniform and all the gear. I was 3^rd base then in right field for the Sioux. I remember bringing home a template to place over a white T shirt and then “apply with iron”. Very cool to do this as a kid. I played until I was 15 but after that there was nowhere else to go and play. The end of the road for my baseball career. I outgrew playing Baseball but will forever be a big fan.

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May 17, 2015 John White

THE OCTOPUS WON! (CARIBBEAN)

Octopus

It was out first night dive of the week with Whitey, Max and Denise. We had been out for about 3 days and done some fabulous diving and spear fishing. We were all comfortable diving with each other and at a perfect location to dive off the back of the boat for a night dive. We usuallystart a night dive as the sun is going down. 6:30 is night time – right? We find it difficult to do really late night diving as we are just too tired. As we prepared our dive gear, Denise looked at me and said ‘you’re taking your spear gun aren’t you?’ I thought to myself ‘Well I wasn’t going to’ but instead I said to Denise ‘Sure. If you are, I am’. So we took a giant stride in the water, Denise and I with spear guns and Max with the yellow game bag to carry the catch.

Arrow Crab

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May 9, 2015 John White

TALES FROM THE DEEP! (PORT O’CONNOR, TEXAS)

45 MILES TO THE OIL RIGS

I have a passion for spearfishing. As I have traveled on boats from Australia through the South Pacific to the Caribbean waters, it is my favorite sport. When the anchor goes down then it’s in the water to see what’s for dinner. The only line fishing I do is trolling while underway on our sailboat and casting from the dock or from the boat. I’d rather see what I am catching and it’s good exercise.

For extreme spearfishing, I join my mate Kurt and his friends in Texas for fun off of the oil rigs. We go out 45 miles from Port O’Conner and drop down on the rigs. The water is so clear and the coral growth on the structures are better than some of the reef systems in the Caribbean.

Oil Rig

Our last time out I dropped down to 130’ and just hung onto a pylon waiting to see what comes up from the murky bottom at 200’. There are plenty of snapper, grouper, ling and amberjacks. This day, the other guys were finding and leading their fish through the rig legs when a huge amberjack passed from my left to right just below me. POW! After a great head shot it didn’t move. This is a good thing. If you don’t get a good shot this fish will drag you all over the Gulf. Our spears are attached to the guns with braided leader wire, not strings. If a big fish wants to take you sightseeing then you have to wrap the gun or line around the rig. Without getting tied up yourself.

And more oil rigs

Snapper Catch

Looking at my dive computer I knew I had to do a decompression stop. I nailed the AJ at 180’. I tried to remove the spear from his head but it wouldn’t move. I wrapped him up in the wire and with my arm around him I started for the surface. After a couple decompression stops, I then did a 15 ft. safety stop with a regulator from the boat and breathing 80% oxygen to wash out all of the excess nitrogen in my system. The AJ hadn’t twitched the whole time I was surfacing. When I broke the surface I said to my mate Gary that the AJ is dead but I can’t get the spear out of his head. He pulled the big fish and my gun on board. All the sudden I heard Gary yelling Aussie adjectives…the AJ had come back to life!! He was thrashing all over the boat with a spear sticking out of his head. Gary was hopping all over the boat trying to get away from this thrashing 62 lb Amberjack. I’m glad he didn’t do this trick on me while I was surfacing.

Happy Whitey with his 62 lb Amber Jack

He finally settled down and it was another great day out with Kurt and the boys. We got our limit on Snapper, Grouper Ling and AJ’s. And on the way back, as always, we traded a case of beer for a garbage bag of shrimp on a Mexican shrimp boat.

May 2, 2015 Max White

RELOCATING GYPSY BLUE (FLORIDA TO BELIZE)

Our departure from West Palm Beach on our boat Gypsy Blue was a culmination of lots of hard work and logistics squished in to just a few days. It didn’t take us long from living on land in Belize that we realized that we wanted our boat here with us. Why live near the water if you can’t go out on it? At least that is our theory. And we had put so much sweat and effort on her the past couple years, why just have it sit waiting for us to use it 2-3 months a year. Our plan of going to visit her once a year in the Pacific just no longer made sense. Our South Pacific cruising dream would have to wait.

On the truck and ready to roll

Early December we flew to Los Angeles for a quick 2 days to prepare her to load on a long-bed truck. This involves taking down the sails, dodger and bimini, radar and AIS stands and archway and storing them inside the boat along with the outboard engine, life raft, cooler and all cushions. The dinghy would be covered and stored under the boat on the trailer along with the large archway. But everything else is inside. It was stuffed. Then we took off the boom. The yard would pull the mast. They would wrap the boom and the mast along with the rigging with lots of plastic and tape. These would be stored on the trailer under the boat as well.

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Monthly Archives: May 2015