Everyone should get a vacation like this at least once in their lives…..days spent snorkeling, playing Jacques Cousteau, futzing with different fishing lures, exploring reefs, slapping on another layer of sunscreen, getting mildly freaked out by sinister-looking rays and barracudas, languidly sipping rum with a perfect tropical sunset as a backdrop.

Post-sunset, it’s time to pore over the sea critter field guides, play rummy, drink more rum, and drift off to sleep at ridiculously early hours as the boat bobs gently at anchor. Most nights we have been able to cook up conch and/or fish caught that afternoon. And, as a bonus for me and Allen, we have Danny here to catch us up on all the latest Bay Area gossip and happenings over the dinner table.

Of course, not every day is like that (just most of them). Today was a work day in Placencia: cut and re-swage the jib halyard, tinker with the transmission (a work in progress on this boat), spend time at the top of the mast re-running a cable.

Belize is as expected- colorful, laid back, friendly, expensive. It was a British colony until 1982, so culturally it feels a lot like, say, Jamaica. Topographically it’s most reminiscent of Bocas del Toro in Panama, but with prettier white sand beaches on nearly every cay in sight.

Our days of lower-latitude idyll are numbered, of course. This year’s hurricane season is widely predicted to hit early, and hard. So safety dictates that we keep our northward momentum instead of spending weeks and weeks in this archipelagos, like we’d like to. So the next couple weeks will probably find us in some combination of rushed passagemaking and island bliss, hoping to make landfall in Isla Mujeres sometime in early May. Time will tell……