Sol Sisters

We took a long break after our trip but we’ve officially started training again this month. We’ve got an idea for our next trip, but aren’t ready to disclose the route yet.

We will start posting training miles again at the end of September, including what we cover till the end of the month. It won’t be too long before we hit another big milestone, 2,000 miles paddled together.

We would like to thank Blu Zen and Doug and Mayra Singh for their support of Sol Sisters. We've had the benefit of an easy launch location with a sturdy kayak rack at Blu Zen during the past 18 months since we started kayaking together. The Blu Zen staff has been super supportive during our training and turned out upon our arrival. Doug and Mayra also coordinated publicity and our arrival celebration. We genuinely appreciate the support!

Our daily miles for the trip:
Day 1: 48.6
Day 2: 40.5
Day 3: 30.1
Day 4: 37.0
Day 5: 41.5
Day 6: 30.1
Total: 227.8 miles

Total hours paddled: 59hrs 45min

Average speed for the trip 3.8mph. We had a better average speed until the squall and strong headwind yesterday. In the thick of the squall our max speed was 1.1mph. We pointed into the wind and tried to hold position to avoid being blown and slammed on the sand bars and shallows at St. George’s Caye.

The catamaran, Mis Jak, followed along with us on our journey, being our home base at the end of each day.

The crew of Mis Jak was phenomenal! Captain Izzo kept an eye on us while letting us run our route and make changes on the fly for anchorage. Captain Izzo is an absolute professional on the water and he has put together a crew that works in sync with ease and anticipate what needs to be done.

Ozz and Z were up with us each morning at 4am, ready to reload our gear, tuning into every detail all the way to what setting each of us use on our adjustable paddle length. And at some point each day they would run the dingy out to us with a cold drink or anything we needed to give us a few minutes of a break.

Chef Elvia prepared amazing food and sent bags of fruit with the dingy. And she was on point with not just the quality of her food, but the presentation and timing.

We will do a separate post with all details of how you can get in touch with Captain Izzo and charter for a cruise or book a dive trip.

In addition to the Mis Jak crew was the Sol Sisters support crew, David and Rose Poer who have been working with us for months planning out all of the details. They knew every aspect of how many calories we needed to eat each day and how many liters we needed for hydration. They stayed in touch with our loved ones, documented our trip, laughed with us and so much more…and did so through beautifully supportive friendship.

We are truly grateful to have had the best crew on our journey. Thank you David, Rose, Izzo, Ozz, Z, and Elvia! We love you all!

We are unpacking and settling in today. All-in-all we are doing okay physically and mentally. We’ve both got some blisters, sore hands, salt water abrasions, and a bit of soreness, but nothing serious and all common issues for long distance sea kayaking.

The journey was absolutely a highlight in both of our lives. We experienced the incredible majesty of off-shore Belize, paddling past countless cayes, across incredible coral heads, and out long stretches where we could see nothing but open water ahead.

We saw massive loggerheads that were probably older than both our ages combined and paddled with dolphins. We also got to be on the water for opening day of lobster season and see boats scattered about with their dories all around and the hard working fishermen diving for lobster.

We did have some tough times each day from exhaustion, but we’ve trained for that and always turned it around and pulled ourselves together. We’ve found a way to laugh until we nearly cry when exhausted which gives an endorphin boost to get us back on track.

Still much more to share, but wanted to let you all know we are doing well.

We are home. We covered 227.8 miles in 6 days. Not sure yet how many hours we spent paddling.

We have lots to share about our journey, but need a bit to decompress after the toughest day we’ve ever had on the water. We got slammed hard today with a huge squall with very heavy wind and massive swells. It took us about 2 hours to finally clear it only to be faced with a strong headwind.

Stay tuned as we post pics and videos and the highs, the lows, and a whole lot of appreciation to people who supported us on this amazing adventure.

Rough day on the sea on the last day hut looks like tentative arrival back at BluZen will be between 12:30/1:00

We’ve made it through day 4. But we are down a working SPOT and the spare GPS. The SPOT made it through day one and then died. The spare GPS died the next day.

Day 5 has potential high wind predicted in the afternoon, but we are ready for it. Two more days and we will be back in Caye Caulker.