Half Moon Caye, Lighthouse Reef, picture courtesy of islandexpeditions.com below.
Weighed anchor at 8 a.m. and carefully wended our way back to the open sea. Then we turned north towards Cozumel.
Lovely day. Light breeze out of the northeast, so we were able to sail most of the day.
I kept trying to get weather forecasts on the shortwave radio, but I couldn't get one for our area.
By evening, the sky was overcast, and we could see lightning flashing far ahead of us. Looked as if we were going right into a storm.
Shortly before 10 p.m., Roy woke me and asked me to come up to the cockpit. He was unable to steer the boat and was afraid the rudder had broken. Fortunately, the rudder was fine; we had suddenly been hit by a 35-knot gale, with the headsail and staysail still out. With considerable difficulty, Roy rolled up both sails. They got in a big tangled mess, but at least they were secured. Luckily, the mainsail and mizzen had already been lowered. As soon as the sails were furled and the engine revved up, we were able to steer normally. We headed northeast to avoid the reef we knew was northwest of us.
The wind peaked at 48 knots. The rain came down in torrents, lightning lit the entire sky, and the sea was churned to froth, but there were no super-large waves. We could see the squall on the radar screen. It formed a circle with a two-mile radius and us right in the center. No matter which direction we went, the squall seemed to follow us.
Fortunately, squalls never last long. Within an hour, the wind was down to less than 20 knots, the rain had stopped, and the lightning had moved on. The sea was still flopping around, but nothing we couldn't handle. We were still on course and making 5 knots.
Click to see pictures and touring information at islandexpeditions.com
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