On March 28th, the travel agent called and reported that the Rembrandt had run up on a reef while sailing around Roatan and would be in dry-dock for five weeks! Our trip was to begin April 5th! We were quickly booked into the last three spaces on the Peter Hughes Wavedancer, just in case! After an agonizing weekend, it was reported that the damage was not as bad as first suspected and with a little luck and overnight air service, a new prop blade should be in place by the 5th! Having non-refundable airline tickets, we were going to Belize on the 5th, anyway.
It's very early April 5th, it's raining and we are sitting on the runway at the Dayton airport. We finally take off for St Louis and arrive late. We left St Louis for New Orleans late. Once in New Orleans, we had to gather our luggage and recheck it at the TACA counter. We had only minutes before the plane was to leave. Of course, TACA was behind schedule and we actually had a few minutes to sit before leaving for Belize, finally! As usual, the TACA flight was the best leg of the journey.
We arrive in Belize and some cleared customs without a hitch, but those of us that looked innocent had to open our bags since we were traveling with suspicious looking people. We found our ride to the Ft George Hotel, where we board the Rembrandt. Relief! There's the Belize Aggressor III, the Wave Dancer and in the distance, the Rembrandt. We relaxed, met some other passengers and eventually boarded several zodiacs which transported us to the ship, getting us very wet in the process. The seas are unusually rough according the Captain Frank.
Once on board, we met Captain and crew and were shown to our cabins. The other passengers consisted of 10 Czech men, 3 women from California, a couple from Texas, Barb, Mark and Randy. The crew was Dutch, English and Belizean. Of the 10 Czechs, only 4 spoke any English at all. This made for interesting conversation and some charades throughout the trip.
Dinner was served when the bell was rung and you did not want to be seated too close when that happened. Food was pretty good once you picked out the tomatoes and peppers and conch. Their lemon pie was unusually chocolaty. We had utensils we did not know how to use and decorative dinner napkins folded each and every day by one of the crew. At dinner, Capt Frank would speak and let us know what plans were for the following day. Sometimes the plans actually worked out and on time! But, we had no place else to go, so what the heck!
The first night, they pulled the anchors around 1:30 am and everyone heard that take place. We anchored about 5 am around Turneffe Island. Breakfast was at 7, island time. We had a dive briefing and were ready to dive! The first dive was a check out dive and we all passed. We were hanging onto the buoy line waiting for the divemaster to descend so we could do our drift dive. After about 20 minutes, we saw the zodiac drive away and still no divemaster. We waited patiently in the current. More time passed and we are still hanging, but we did see a turtle. Finally, Mark surfaced and inflated an emergency tube. The zodiac found us and picked us up. The divemaster got in the water, got caught in the current and we never saw him, so the zodiac driver followed the divemaster, oblivious to the fact that we were hanging on the buoy line.
Things got better after this dive! Next few dives we saw: reef sharks, eagle rays, turtles, nurse sharks, extremely nice coral, huge colorful reef fish, enormous grouper, tarpon, etc. We did not see anything we had not seen before, only everything here was larger.
No trip to Belize is complete without diving the Great Blue Hole, so we did. From the surface it is hard to tell that this is a circular reef formation with only two entrances. We anchored the zodiacs, got in the water, descended to 130', saw stalactites and stalagmites, swam around them, posed for pictures, wondered why the computer was flashing and started back up, all in 8 minutes. After two safety stops, we got back on the zodiacs and went back to the ship to rest for the afternoon dive.
The ship moved almost every night while we were sleeping to a new location near some small islands off Belize. Finally Thursday morning the plan was to hoist the sails at 5:15 am. The Capt and the Czechs stayed up drinking rum Wednesday night, so the hoisting was delayed until the Capt got up and issued the command. Once the sails were up, we headed for a new location and had huge swells. Some new crew members were not feeling too well at this point. Every day you had the chance to do at least 3 dives and sometimes 4. Most nights you could do a night dive if you wanted to. All of the night diving was right from the ship, although there was talk of doing a zodiac night dive, but there weren't any willing participants! Since we were flying Saturday, we were limited Friday, but to get in two dives, we did a 6:15 am dive. The final dive was from the moving ship. We lined up with all of our gear in place, the ship slowed and one by one we jumped into the water. The zodiacs circled back to pick us up and return us to the ship which was still sailing. This made for an interesting exchange from the zodiac to the ship.
We had several occasions to leave the ship and go to shore. Sunday night the zodiacs took guests to Turneffe Island for a bonfire at a local fish camp. Wednesday we had the chance to go ashore on Lighthouse Reef. We wandered around the island and climbed the observatory to watch the red footed booby birds and frigates, who inhabit the island and are protected here. There were a lot of nice coral and sea fans along the shoreline, but being a protected area, it was off limits as souvenirs. Thursday afternoon we went to Manta Island to visit Manta Reef Resort. This is a very primitive resort, but it sounded like the diving had been great according to the guests. Here some of the macho men cracked coconuts and we enjoyed the fresh coconut meat. The last night on the ship, we had the chance to go into Belize City, Belize. But, after free drinks from Capt Frank and dinner, most people just hung around and enjoyed the last night of being rocked to sleep by the motion of the ship.
We don't have the usual list of stupid things people said or did on the trip..... We took a vow of silence never to mention any of the embarrassing moments, ever again!!!!!!!
