After our return from Fiji and a brief visit to see friends
and family in the States, we returned to Tadd's sailboat, Third Aye on the Rio
Dulce in Guatemala with a plan. Since nobody bought her, we would sail up to
Key West and leave her there in the hands of a capable broker. From there, we
were undecided on what to do with ourselves.
Of course, after Third Aye sat without use for a year tied
to a dock, some things didn't work anymore, so they had to be replaced. We had
also sold most of everything not attached to her, so there was some shopping to
do!
We departed in September from the Rio Dulce with a great
sail plan and fair weather. By the time we exited the river and headed out to
sea, the weather turned against us and made the trip very bumpy.
Since the wind decided to blow FROM where we needed to go,
we had to “tack” back and forth.
You will notice the big loop at the top of the picture where
we got caught in a squall. That set us back a couple of days and broke a couple
of things on the boat. By the time we arrived in San Pedro, things got worse
and we had to leave the boat with our friends at a dive shop called Ecologic Divers. They were awesome and looked
after Third Aye and even made some fuel line repairs while we drove up to Mexico to
look at buying a dive shop called www.wetset.com!
Then Hurricane Rina developed off the coast and we tried to
go down there to protect the boat in the mangroves, but the ferries stopped
running out to Ambergris Caye, so we stayed in Chetumal while Charlie from
Ecologic Divers got Third Aye ready for a storm! Luckily, Rina turned North and
diminished before running over Puerto Morelos! When we returned and made our
repairs to Third Aye, the water pump burned a bearing and we had to go to the
States for more engine parts.
After a very quick trip to Key West, we returned to San
Pedro and started making repairs. A couple of days later, we headed into the
winds again. As you can see, we had the same problem. Tacking back and forth
was not fun, but we persevered and arrived safely into El Cid Marina and
cleared into Mexico!
We decided to keep Third Aye on a mooring at El Cid Marina
until we figured out what to do with her. We then got to work with this new adventure called Wet Set Diving Adventures. And boy, did we ever get a surprise with that!
