On route from Lighthouse Reef to Tobacco Cay

Conch house at Tom Owen's Cay

…. with Belize!    Phew, we hear you say …  thought we were on to the mushy stuff!   We have really loved our time in Belize, which has come to an end after 7 weeks, 407nm of sailing with visits to 3 offshore atolls and 26 islands.   The variety here has continued to delight us: we have swum off mangrove cays with manatees, snorkelled on coral atolls with all manner of sharks and fish and visited the Blue Hole.   The miles sailed have invariably been with wonderful wind and calm turquoise seas, all inside the world’s second biggest barrier reef.  We have negotiated some extremely tricky passes and now are quite good at calling the depths amongst the coral heads merely from the colour of the water - we have even stopped holding our breath when the depth gauge goes to 0.00! (It hasn’t stopped us worrying though!)    If anyone has the opportunity to sail in Belize, we can highly recommend it (but make sure you have the satellite charts).  We have loved our time in this wonderfully unspoilt country.