Yeah Buoy: Risking It All For My Growing Collection
Yesterday, while driving back from Rocky Point Permit Camp, in a relatively remote cove where the sargassum REALLY piles up, I spotted a buoy. A beauty!
And I knew I needed to get it.
So get ready for a story of heroic grit and gumption. And me breaking THREE of my personal taboos:
- Sharing pictures of myself. I don’t even let people take photos too near me. I hate it. (And I’m not sure I like that these are going to be the photos of me that show up on Google for now on. Bandito Scoop)
- Pictures of the bad sargassum on our beaches. It’s afflicting the entire Caribbean and Yucatan coast right now – it’s awful. 2025 is the worst year we’ve ever had – there is plenty of global reporting on it. It’s also waayyy worse in some spots – and this is one of them. Let’s hope a tiny storm system – maybe in a light tropical depression moves around here and changes the winds and currents and sweeps it all away. That tends to happen in July or August…or September. Sargassum generally clears out. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
- Trash photos. The trash can wash in with the sargassum – I might hate it more than the sargassum. Yesterday, I gathered water bottles from St Lucia (4 Forest Springs bottles in one stretch) and a couple in Chinese lettering. Interesting note: Quite a few bottles of roll-on deodorant. I didn’t know that still existed! Please, please, please dispose of your household trash responsibly!
So let’s begin. Thank you to Jamie for the shoreside photography. One of her sandaled feet sunk about a foot into the muck – she’s a hero too.
I’d like to say that I easily retrieved this buoy from the sea. That I walked in gracefully, maybe even swam against the current, and emerged victorious…
But no. I waded – knee-deep, then thigh-deep – through about 25 feet of hot THICK sargassum sludge in Jeff’s old fishing waders (that he said might leak). It smelled like defeat. It felt beyond disgusting. I knew that if I fell over the sludge might suck me right in…just like that scene that freaked me out as a child in the classic movie, “The Blob”.
I’d never get that putrid smell off my bare skin.
But all that aside…I got the buoy for my growing collection.
The sludge is SO thick that you can not wade…I had to step up and out and over…pulling my leg out with all my might. And almost falling over when a small wave shifts this epic sludge-mass.
Yeah, buoy.
And the Guatemalan ice cream on the way home…
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The bravery this took! Way to go Rebecca! The buoy is a beauty!
That’s a very nice addition to your collection. And so little effort!!!
Where the heck did you get chest waders in Belize. I can’t believe even Jeff would have them!
I still have some glass Japanese fishing net floats that I found in Hawaiian waters in 1970-71.
Good job Rebecca!
You are much braver than I!
Wow…….good for you Rebecca……hope you’re smell better today…
I love this post so much! What an adventure. I gotta say, you are lucky to be tall. I don’t think I would have made it out of that quagmire alive!
Good job—more pictures
Rebecca, those are the first pictures I have seen of you since I left Belize in 2018.
I have a large file of your Sanpedroscoop adventures.
Miss you guys lots.
Blessings from Canada 🇨🇦 🙏🏻🎶🤗
Now that’s determination!
😍
I wish this was a video!!
You’re so brave. Glad you got it! So…What are you gonna do with it?
We are the Champions, We are the Champions, of the World!!!!
Eeeww!! You’re braver than I would be. Or crazier, though I doubt it. There was a couple in Xcalak that rented out a house to us many moons ago (23 yrs?)The husband collected those little balls that come from the roll-on deodorant bottles. He had a huge bowl of them.
the funniest thing i read here… was.. ”Yeah, buoy”.
Someone has a boat here named that. I laugh every time.
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