I changed the name of my boat to Dragonfly. I liked Spindrift, but I got tired of having to explain the meaning. Everyone knows what a dragonfly is. I hope to convey an image of lightness and speed. So Dragonfly she is.

Last year I took her out for her second sea trial. The aim was to head NE, to get to the barrier reef, as the first stage of sailing her to Half Moon Caye at Lighthouse Reef. I had three days of light winds while I finished a few details. On the fourth day, I rolled her into the water. The wind picked up fresh from ENE, and she skipped along heading due N. No matter what I did, I could not get any easting out of her. Four hours we sailed N, essentially running up the Inner Channel between the mainland and the barrier reef, getting no closer to the reef.

About four o’clock the jib sheet unrolled off the spool so I couldn’t reef in the jib. Then a squall hit.

You can see a squall coming a long way off. You see it, and you hope it will pass to one side or the other, but it keeps getting darker, closer and bigger. A long line of dark, low cloud loomed in from the NE. As it approached, the breeze freshened. Then came the taste of rain in the air.

Suddenly it was upon me. Rain pelted me in the face as it hissed on the sea, flattening the chop to tiny rollers. The jib snapped and popped, as the sheet rattled the block. Too maritimey? The sail in front was flogged by the wind, its rope rattling the pulley it fed through on the deck of the boat. Anyway, it made quite a racket and I was concerned the wind might shred the sail.

The whole event was over in two minutes. Squalls are like that: short-tempered and soon calm again. During those two minutes I was blown about a mile closer to shore. So I turned around and tried to make the reef by heading SE.

Darkness settled in. I was heading closer to the reef, but now I couldn’t see it, and I couldn’t see any of the patch reefs that would be lurking in the shallow back-reef, waiting for me. So the only thing to do was to head back to Dangriga.

It’s a little unnerving, sailing in unfamiliar waters at night. I could see the lights of Dangriga well enough, and I was pretty sure there were no islands or shallows on my route, but there was an eerie glow to the right of my course. I tried to puzzle out what it might be. The faint, orangey-yellow glow reminded me of a kerosene lamp. Perhaps I was seeing the glow through the windows of a cabin on an unseen, nearby island? If it was, it was not far away.

The only way to judge distance is to watch and see if the angle changes over time. A nearby object will be seen to pass by. If it is far, the angle will remain more constant, like the moon following your car as you drive through the night.

It soon became apparent that this glow was far away indeed, and then it dawned on me what I was seeing. It was a wildfire, burning up a mile or more of savanna, several miles up the coast. It is a good thing I didn’t decide to go ashore, rather than return to Dangriga.

The mystery solved, this strange glow became a thing of awesome beauty, the natural cleansing of the tropical savanna, an annual event which gets no interference from man in Belize.

Eventually as the town came into clearer view, I could discern some recognisable features: the bright lights of the basketball court, the dark shimmer of Stann Creek, and finally the street light in front of the office. I had arrived. Exhausted and arse-sore, I stiffly stretched as the boat glided up to the beach.

Conclusion: I need to take out the too-small Hobiecat rudder I had used as a daggerboard (retractable keel) and install a bigger centerboard (a keel you slde down from above). But that will have to wait for next season.

Just a brief note about recent paddles. The winds have been blowing out of the S and SE lately, making for a bumpy ride and tricky launches and landings. So a tip of the hat to two brave couples, Bill and Elise, and Jerry and Vicki, who took up the challenge and paddled out with me this past week. They all showed an adventurous spirit we had fun bouncing around in a choppy sea. Good luck to you all, and I hope to see you again.

When we do a night snorkel, we always hope to find an octopus. There is no creature in the sea so interesting to watch. The way they move, their reactions to our presence, their amazing camouflage all  make the octopus a favourite animal to find on a snorkel. Because they are largely nocturnal, if you want a good chance of seeing an octopus you have to snorkel after dark.

It’s just getting dark, about 6:30 pm. We gather at the dining hall, and, carrying our snorkel gear, dive lights and regular headlamps, we hike down to the path along the north side of the island. As the trail passes into the littoral forest, we are immersed in deep twilight. Some turn on their headlamps. We don’t use our dive lights, because as bright at as they are, they use up the rechargeable batteries too quickly to waste them above the water.

We get to a point on the trail where the canopy opens up and the trail passes close to the water’s edge. This is the beach where we will enter the water and head to a cluster of patch reefs called The Octopus’s Garden. Shedding our excess clothing and donning our gear, we wade into the shallow water for a quick briefing before we start our swim. As I help one guest with his equipment, another one quietly and calmly gets my attention.

“Jack,” he says. “Do I have a jellyfish on my leg?”

He turns to show me the back of his calf, as I shine my light on it. For a moment I am baffled. There is a strange blob hanging from his calf, half out of the water. Then I see, radiating from the blob, a number of long, fleshy tentacles, some showing rows of suckers. It is an octopus, and it is clinging to his leg like a child that has climbed too far up the trunk of a tree and is afraid to fall.

I remember reading recently, that although is has been known for a long time that the blue-ringed octopus from the Pacific Ocean has a deadly venom in its saliva, only recently was it discovered that all species of octopus are at least mildly venomous. And here was one octopus, probably very nervous, clinging to the leg of a guest, its parrot-like beak, armed with a saliva of unknown toxicity, at point-blank range to his unprotected calf.

My first thought was that we must not frighten the octopus, which also meant we must not frighten the man. If he were to panic, he may panic his hitch-hiker. So keep it calm, keep it light, I thought.

“Wow,” I cried. “It’s an octopus! Now don’t move, let’s take a picture. Do you have a camera?”

I wanted to keep the man calm by giving him something else to think of and to give the octopus the opportunity to decide to leave on his own. Someone handed me a camera.

“Now hold still,” I told him. I took a couple of pictures. Others did the same. The octopus stayed put. Everyone was excited about the octopus but not so much as to make the situation worse. The octopus calmly clung to the man’s leg, and showed no sign of wanting to escape the paparazzi flashing him. I was content that the octopus did not seem too stressed. He wasn’t flashing red or blanching, he just displayed a normal pattern of reddish brown blotches and smooth skin. But it was time he left with his dignity intact.

I asked the man to slow move toward shore. Perhaps if the octopus felt he was getting too far out of the water, he would slide down and swim off before he became stranded. It didn’t work. He continued to cling. So I asked the man to move in deeper. He did but still the tenacious cephalopod refused to budge. So I very slowly and gingerly touched the tips of his tentacles farthest up his leg.

Octopuses have very sensitive tentacles, especially at the tips. They have an acute sense of touch and are also chemosensitive, that is they smell what they touch with the tips of their slender appendages. Octopuses tentacles are also very vulnerable. An octopus caught in the open will  curl up his tentacles at the approach of a fish, as even small wrasses love to bite off the tips and eat them.

At first the octopus ignored the intrusion of my fingers against the tips of his tentacles. So I pushed against them, trying to lift them off the leg without actually grabbing hold. I was trying to be as non-threatening as possible, knowing how suddenly he could bite, with unknown consequences.

At the insistent pressure of my fingertips, the octopus began to withdraw his tentacles, peeling them off the man’s leg, and flowed into the water. He was free.

We watched for a moment as the octopus spread himself out on the shallow bottom, with arms spread and stretched out straight. He lay there for a moment, then swam off. There was a collective murmur from the crowd as we acknowledged how rare an encounter we just shared with such an amazing animal. Then we waded out and began our night snorkel. We saw a variety of interesting creatures that night, but nothing as astonishing as that octopus.

This boat I have been working on for the last, oh, let’s say nine or ten years, in my spare time, while in Belize, has finally reached the point where I could put her in the water and see if she floats, or just keels over and goes down.

I built her myself, from my imagination about how a sailboat should work, but I had a lot of questions:

1. How high will she sit in the water? This was a big one, as the first boat I built (Manadi) was so heavy by the time I put on the decking, the outrigger, mast and keel, that she sat so low in the water, I was constantly bailing her. Every little wave would slop a little water over the gunwales. I hauled her out and added a few inches to the freeboard, and that made a big difference.
2. Are the outriggers or amas set to the right height?  Manadi’s single ama could be adjusted up and down a bit, but Spindrift’s two amas are bolted on. They can be rotated up and out of the way but do not adjust vertically.
3. This is the big one: is the keel adequate in size, and is it in the right location? The keel on Spindrift is an old Hobiecat rudder, salvaged on the beach at Half Moon Caye. It is not very wide, but it is deep. My main concern is that it is mounted too far forward.

How do I stop this stupid automatic formatting from inserting a new number every time I hit <enter>? There. Got it. Moving on.

Before I start showing pictures, I just have to warn you that, although she hasn’t been in the water since I paddled her from Belize City after the shipwrecking of Manadi, she has been through a few rainy seasons, had a bit of mud thrown at her, been filled with rainwater a couple of times, in short, she is a bit weatherbeaten.

Here she is on the beach in front of the Island Expeditions ops centre, ready to assemble, and with the amas installed.

Here she is with the main sail in place.

Another angle:

Note the curvature of the starboard-side ama. The amas are made from a wind-surfing board, and so they curve upward at the nose. I installed them facing backwards, as I didn’t want the leading edge to hit the water on an angle, causing undue stress. The leading edge is straight, but low, so it might dip into larger waves. Whether this is a problem we will see.

Now that she is ready to slide into the water, it is time for her first sea trial.

I have a pair of dock fenders, which make perfect rollers. They flatten out a little over the soft sand, and support the boat, rolling more like tank treads than wheels. If they were harder, they might allow sand to build up in front of them making forward motion difficult if not impossible.

The wind was light, from the East, coming straight onto the shore. I was ready.

The boat rolled over the beach and slid into the water. With a big push, I jumped into the cockpit, and picked up a paddle, moving away from the shore. As soon as I was far enough off shore, I pulled in the sheet, and the boat immediately started sailing on a SE course, moving steadily away from shore.

The waves slapped against the windward ama as she picked up speed. I could detect a bit of sideways drift, then remembered to lower the hinged keel. I still need to install a cable that will pull the keel down, so I had to reach over the side and, feeling under the hull, I found the slot the keel rests in. I managed to grab the tip of the keel and hauled her into a vertical position. Immediately the boat ceased sliding sideways and picked up more speed. She began to turn to windward, and I compensated by turning the tiller. With full rudder, she still was turning to windward, and began to stall. I looked back and the rudder was lying almost sideways on the water surface. The wooden transom that the rudder bracket was screwed onto had broken or come loose. This sea trial was over, a mere few hundred metres from shore. Oh well. I expected things might go wrong, as they had with Manadi.

I could not get her to head towards shore. If I hauled in the sheet to sail, the boat would turn into the wind, away from land. If I let out the sheet, I could get her to head towards shore, more or less, but I could only drift. So I picked up the paddle and brought her in the old-fashioned way. I was pleased to learn I could paddle her easily enough, This was another question that I had before I launched: could I comfortably reach the water with a paddle? The answer was yes.

Because the boat has a lot of aluminum, I cannot just leave her on shore or someone might steal her for the scrap value. So I moved down the beach a short distance until I was in front of Dave’s house. Dave is a good friend to Island Expeditions, the kind of guy who couldn’t do enough for you. He gave me permission to store the boat on his parking area right in front of his house.

With a bit of grunting and sweating, I managed to get Spindrift on the crushed stone driveway. I went to Sam’s to get some tools. I then came back and unscrewed the rudder bracket and the removed the wooden piece the bracket was screwed to. Then I took it all over to Sam’s to rebuild it.

It took most of the rest of the day, but I got a new rudder assembly built and and ready to re-install.

The rudder wasn’t the only issue. With the keel so close to the mast, the balance of forces between the sail, the keel and the rudder was way off. The keel and rudder should work together to counter-balance the sail. If the keel is too far aft, the boat will turn away from the wind. This is bad because if the sailor falls overboard, the boat will sail away downwind, leaving the sailor floating in the sea by himself.

If the keel is too far forward, the boat will do what it did: point towards the wind until it stalls.  What you want is for the boat to want to turn upwind, but only slightly, so the rudder can correct this tendency. This way, if the sailor falls overboard, the boat will turn into the wind and stall, allowing the sailor to return to his boat. More generally, if you let go of the tiller, the boat turns to windward and stops sailing, so you can do what needs to be done without the boat sailing wildly downwind.

The next day was one of perfect tropical weather. Small cotton-ball clouds scudded slowly in a pale blue sky. An Easterly breeze stirred up a light chop in the green water.

I installed the rebuilt rudder assembly and got the sailing rig ready. This time I added a jib, hopefully to move the center of effort of the sailing rig forward and improve the balance of forces.

All through this project and the one before, I relied on my friend Sam to provide me with space, tools and his occasional help. I had promised him a ride, and wanted to make good on it. Sam doesn’t swim and hasn’t even been in a boat since he was a kid so he was pretty nervous, but he wanted to come for at least a short sail. So when the boat was ready, he came down to the beach. I got him a lifejacket and made sure it was properly fitted to him. He rolled up his jeans (grown men in Belize generally are not keen on wearing shorts, as this is seen as a sign of childhood) and he climbed aboard. I pushed off.

Despite her length, Spindrift is really built for one person. So Sam had to sit on the forward edge of the gunwales, facing backward. He was pretty nervous at first as the boat rolled a bit in the waves, but once we were sailing away, he gained confidence that she wouldn’t just tip over on us. Occasionally a set of larger waves would strike the windward ama and the hull. The boat rocked a bit but showed no sign of instability and he began to relax and have fun.

Dinsdale Sampson, friend, furniture maker and first-time sailor.

I had decided to try the keel again, but this time to lower it only halfway. Since it opened downwards like a pocket knife, I calculated that the halfway-down position would place its center of resistance farther back, and hopefully the smaller amount of exposed keel would be sufficient to reduce lateral drift, and its exposed end would be better located to balance the forces with the sails.

I never found out because the keel was inexplicably jammed in its trunk and would not be coaxed out. So we had to sail without it.

Since the forecast was for light Easterlies all day, I thought it might be fun to sail south, along the coast the nine miles to Hopkins. Hopkins was, not too long ago, a sleepy Garifuna fishing village, but in the last decade or so has become a popular tourist spot. Not too popular yet, it is mostly small family-owned restaurants, beach bars and hotels, scattered among the homes of retired ex-pats from North America and the UK. The beach is the main pedestrian road, and running parallel is a strip of seagrass a short distance from shore. People walk the beach and manatees travel along the seagrass bed.

There is a laid-back vibe here, where Garifuna is heard on the streets, and  Rastafarians and hippies mingle with wealthier tourists, divers and fishermen. So I thought it might be fun to sail down to Hopkins, have a pint with the locals and tourists, and then sail back.

We were out maybe an hour when the weather changed. What had been a light E breeze suddenly shifted to the N, and grew in strength. A bank of cloud started to form to the south of us and began expanding in our direction. If we continued on our Southward course, we would have have to beat our way back to Dangriga against the wind in a boat without a keel. Not a good option, so we turned around and headed N again, back to Dangriga. We would run along a tack that pointed us parallel to shore, but we slowly drifted shoreward. When we got too close, we would change tack, and heading due E, we would get in a better position to sail farther N. We were not worried about anything. We would get there in due time. So a distance that took an hour to head south, took three and a half hours to get us home again. But get home we did, before dark, and put the boat away for the time being in Dave’s parking lot.

Now to figure out why the keel won’t come down.

Well my season in Belize is all wrapped up. I didn’t do any reporting while I was there, hoping to snag some pictures from guests, but the time ran away and I am home again. It was a good season, overall. Here is the first of some highlights.

Crooked Tree

When the days of preying on the Spanish fleet, loaded with gold and silver pilfered from the natives of Central America were over, the Baymen of British Honduras, as they called themselves, were pressed for a way to make a living. There was one valuable item, easy to harvest. This was the logwood tree (Haematoxylum campechianum) Despite its name, this is a shrubby tree, with a twisted trunk, which grows along stream banks, in swamps and along the shores of lakes and ponds in southern Mexico and northern Central America. The sap of the logwood tree was used extensively for dyeing textiles. By altering its pH, the sap could be made to produce a variety of colours, from reddish-yellow to purple.

Since the logwood grew along the banks of rivers, and the only way to travel in Belize those days was by canoe, it was a simple matter to harvest it and float it to the mouth of the Belize River, where it could be loaded on ships and sent to England. This became the main industry in Belize from the 1670’s to the 1780’s.

Travelling up the Belize River, a party of Baymen headed up a tributary known as Black Creek. They discovered a long, narrow lake (in Belize lakes are called lagoons) which splits, leaving a large, central island. Unlike the surrounding terrain, the island was high and dry even during the rainy season when rising waters from the Belize River would reverse the flow of Black Creek and fill the lagoon and surrounding forest with floodwaters. On this island the Baymen established a logging camp, and named it after the tree they sought, the Crooked Tree.

Centuries later, Crooked Tree village is accessible by road most of the year, and is surrounded by a large protected area known as Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. Logwood ceased to be a valuable commodity when other, cheaper dyes were discovered. The main industry of the village now is cashew products. The fruit of the cashew tree produces a single seed, hanging from its underside. This fruit is also used to make jam and a notorious fermented beverage known as cashew wine. It is said the hangover from drinking too much of this wine is without parallel.

Other sources of income to the village include a little cattle ranching and tourism. The big attraction here for tourists is bird-watching. The lagoon goes through an annual cycle of flooding and drying. When it is in flood, wading birds inhabit the shores and swamps, and the lagoon hosts a large population of ducks, both tropical and migratory and neotropical cormorants, while snail kites, black hawks and black vultures hover and soar overhead. Ashore, one can spot flocks of parrots, and a variety of insect-eating birds, such as cattle egrets, vermilion flycatchers, tropical kingbirds and many others. But it is when the lagoon starts to shrink that things get interesting.

As the water-level falls, the swamps dry up and then the lagoon becomes a shallow, weedy network of channels. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of birds make use of the shrinking lagoon to gain access to the fish, snails, frogs and other inhabitants. Great flocks of egrets mix with white pelicans, roseate spoonbills, wood storks and the famous jabiru stork, a huge pterodactyl of a bird with a wingspan up to nine feet (nearly three metres).

We were staying at the Bird’s-Eye View Lodge on the shore of the lagoon. The dry season had progressed to the point where our guide Leonard wasn’t sure if the boat would have enough water for a pre-dawn birding tour. As it turned out, we got the last tour before they pulled up the boats for the remainder of the dry season.

We met in the early twilight for a cup of coffee or tea and quickly boarded the boat. Even before we got underway Leonard was pointing out a variety of birds, and we could see great gatherings farther down the lagoon. I won’t bore the reader with lists of species spotted, but this day we were lucky to see something very unusual.

The northern jacana is a small, chicken-like wading bird with huge, long toes, allowing it to walk on the floating vegetation as if it was walking on water. I’ll let you figure out this bird’s nickname…

The jacanas are a very pretty bird with black head and neck, rusty back and wings, with bright yellow bill, forehead and underwings. They have a comical walk as they place their toes on the weeds. The males make a nest and encourage a female to mate, which then lays a single egg. Then the female leaves to find a new mate and a new nest for her next egg. The chicks are speckled brown and are found with their father who raises and protects them as they search for food together.

As we squeezed down the narrow, shallow channel towards the big flocks ahead, Leonard drew our attention to a group of jacanas, three adults and three chicks. They were standing in a circle looking into the middle and chirping excitedly. In the centre of the circle, barely sticking out of the weeds, was a pair of nostrils. Occasionally a whole snout would emerge, revealing a pair of eyes. It became clear that we were looking at the submerged head of a boa constrictor (the only animal whose latin name is identical to its English common name).

The large snake had swum out in the dark and buried itself in the weeds, with only its eyes and nostrils emerging occasionally, ready to snap out and throw a few coils around a hapless egret or duck which waded too close. As long as the jacanas stuck around and warned the others, this snake would go hungry. Of course, jacanas have to eat too, and we knew they would soon fly off. After that, either the snake would eventually get its meal, or a jabiru stork would spot the snake, and the would-be predator, well, would be prey. Such is life in the Crooked Tree Lagoon and I was lucky to be there to see it.

This is a bit of a blast from the past, but to give my reader(s) a sense of what paddling the Sonoran Coast is like, I have a collection of photos, literally snapshots of my kayaking experience here. So to begin.

My Fleet

This is an earlier picture of my fleet of boats. On top is a 17′ Nipissing canoe (red), which I brought with me from Northern Ontario when I moved to Vancouver. Beside the canoe is a Greenland-style seal-hunting kayak (white), which I built in Vancouver with the help of an instructor.Super-light and nimble, she has a wooden frame and a ballistic nylon shell, painted with Hypalon, which is what coats high-quality rubber dinghies.

Below those, in two tiers of three, are my Seaward Southwinds tandem kayaks.  These boats are heavy but they paddle well, and can carry a big load for long expeditions.

I have since added three single kayaks to my fleet. Pix to come.

Punta las Cuevas

This young couple is passing through a cave I call the elevator. Waves enter from both ends, and if you sit a moment in the middle you will ride up and down with each passing swell..

taking it easy

Winds are light, but with the sailing rig you get a little push, and a welcome rest from paddling. Who said kayaking has to be work?

Blue-footed boobies

It’s not hard to find the roosting sites of these beautiful birds. Watching them dive on a school of sardines is a spectacular sight.

entering a cave

The rugged coast is pocked with caves, some of which are large enough to enter and get out of the sun for a moment. Watch those rocks!

Shore lunch

This is a group of great people who I was lucky to enjoy a ten-day expedition with. In this shot we have pulled ashore to make some lunch. The sails make a convenient patch of shade and we are eating ceviche made from fish we caught only moments before landing.

This scene isn’t much different from the previous one. I just love it. Here we are taking a lunch break along a section of the coast which is one long beach for miles.

Lizard says bye for now. More pix coming soon.

What is a nation but a group of people united by common principles and traditions? A nation as diverse as ours can easily be pulled apart into competing factions, and this does happen occasionally to some degree. This why our common principles and our traditions are so important, so much a part of what defines us as a people and as a nation.

War is and always will be a horrible thing, something to be avoided at nearly all costs. Loss of freedom to tyranny is one cost too great even to avoid war, and so, when war broke out in Europe early in the twentieth century, the people of Canada answered the call. Over 620,000 men and women signed up and the rest did all they could at home to support the war effort. Many never came back. Many came back broken, physically or mentally. All suffered loss in some way.

The nations of Europe swore peace and promised never to do it again. But they did, and again, the Canadian people again went to war. They went voluntarily, knowing the costs, still feeling the losses from the Great War of Europe.

My dad was one of them. Young, patriotic and eager he ran down to a recruitment office to sign up. He was a hearty fifteen-year-old, and lied about his age so they took his name. But his high school principal found out and marched down to the recruitment office and told the officer to take Harold Wilde’s name off the books.

So the eager young warrior went to a different recruiting office and signed up again. But this raised suspicions and he was called into a meeting with his Principal. His principal made an offer, to him and a group of other eager would-be recruits: that if they would wait a year, they could do an accelerated curriculum, graduate from high school a year early, and then they could sign up. And that is what they did.

Dad never talked about the war when I was a kid. I think it was partly because the scars were still too fresh, and partly because he did not want to glorify war to a young boy. The war had ended fifteen years before I was born but it still was a significant part of our lives and culture. To this day, despite our involvement in many other conflicts around the world, Canadians still call it “the war”.

Passchendale, The Somme, Vimy Ridge: the Great War defined us as a nation. The Second World War cemented that unity, and connected us with a community of nations. We have had our divisive moments, but we remain united in our basic principles of fairness, of kindness, of a duty to each other, to our nation, and to all of humanity. We need our traditions to remind us of the importance of that unity, and once a year we remember those who willingly sacrificed so much to ensure that our people remain free. We owe a debt of gratitude and remembrance to those who made their sacrifice, and those who continue to serve and sacrifice. And that debt will never, ever be paid in full.

Thank you CBC, for broadcasting the national Remembrance Day celebration on the internet. Thank you to all those who organised, who recorded,and who participated in all of the Remembrance Day celebrations across the entire Dominion. Thank you to those who continue to serve in various missions across the globe. And thank you to all who served and sacrificed so much so that we can enjoy our freedom. May this truly Canadian tradition continue to bring us together as one people for as long as Canada stands as a nation.