Suntanned and back to trim (Day 821)

Well we took a short respite from the house and went sailing in Belize--that's British Honduras to most of you that took geography in the 60's. Nice 3rd world micro nation with out the obvious drug and crime problems of its neighbors. We chartered a 38' catamaran from TMM Yachts for a bare-boat trip down the Belize reef, the largest in the northern hemisphere. Little did we suspect that it had been trashed by decades of over fishing and increasing sea temps. The water was 80-82°F in Jan. and a bit more in the summer. We sailed out of San Pedro, Ambergris Caye which is the most populated of the hundreds of offshore islands in Belize. San Pedro is a bit of a pit, crowded with golf carts, tourist shops, and hotel/condos. Caye Caulker to the south is a bit more laid back it you are into laying around on the beach.

The sailing was adventurous to say the least. We were restricted to the back (western) reef waters for obvious reasons—the most important of which is the easterlies would drive a disabled vessel upon the reef, and when it comes to fiberglass vs coral, the coral will always win. Lots of the routes between the reef and back bar islands (mangrove covered) is in water less than 10 ft deep, some 5 ft. Our boat drew 4 ft, so we keep a careful eye on the depth meter and the bottom. It is mostly sandy bottom so the worst case is you get stuck for 6-8 hours as a high (±0.5 ft) tide lifts you. Nevertheless, we had ideal conditions going down with 10-15 knot easterlies and a southern route for about 70 miles. So lots of beam reaches with full main and jib, making 4-5 knots.

On the return leg to the north, we had two days of 25-30 knot northerlies, which meant motor-cruising dead into the wind. I've had more fun and now have more respect for the term "going to weather." The cats are so burdened (12-16k lbs of displacement) that you just can't get them going. Think of two monohulls bolted together by the saloon and back deck. On the plus side, they are great boats for leisurely sailing with families and kids. No regrets, just a desire for more speed (that comes from my history of racing beach cats).

We returned to standard PacNW weather; light rain and cool temps but it felt good after the heat and humidity of Central America. First job up was to complete installation of the bath cabinets, including installing the wall unit. Now its on to doing the trim work in the upstairs bed and bathrooms. There are 3 doors to trim out (1x4 finger joint-painted trim and 5/4 x 6 headers) and about 125 ft of floor trim. I'll cut it all to size first, dry fit it, then paint it using my now favorite method of rolling the latex on and tipping it off with a brush. Two coats, nail it up, and then fill the nail holes and touch up the pain. I'll paint the door trim in place since it has to be caulked anyway. Richerts says they can't install the countertop for 3 weeks, but that's not a big issue. We're glad to see that they're booked up for January; business must be picking up in the construction world.

Hopefully, with a couple days of trim and paint, the upstairs bedroom furniture can go back in place and I can get on to tackling the monster job of laying up the 120 sq. ft of Chinese Ming green marble tile that we bought last fall for the bath and shower surround. The big chore on this tile job is to bull nose all the corner tiles by hand (sanders and grinders), but that's another chapter for this blog.