Rough seas stop San Pedro coffee exporters

They had a great idea to export coffee from Belize to the United States using an energy efficient sailboat, but three Texans who departed San Pedro on Christmas Eve with a cargo of roasted coffee beans had to be rescued on Tuesday afternoon in the Gulf of Mexico. The husband and wife team of Joe and Terry Butcher, joined by Joe’s brother Douglas, reached within two hundred miles of Galveston Bay when their forty-two foot sailboat, Red Cloud, encountered the same cold front that’s been chilling Belize this week. The thirty-five knot gusts produced twenty-five foot waves and by Tuesday morning, having lost its engine, the boat was tossing in the turbulent seas and beginning to fill with water. Using a ham radio operator as a relay, the Butchers called the U.S. Coast Guard, which sent out a boat, jet and helicopter. By three Tuesday afternoon the chopper was on the scene and hoisted the three crew members plus the family dog to safety. They were brought to the mainland and eventually returned to their home in El Lago, Texas. At news time a salvage vessel was attempting to tow the sailboat, which is still intact, into port. According to the Butchers’ business partner, Paul Clause of Caye Coffee in San Pedro, the ten thousand pounds of coffee was vacuum packed and should reach Texas undamaged. The beans are imported green from various regions of Guatemala and then custom roasted by Clause at the company’s Ambergris Caye headquarters. It is not clear at this time whether the Butchers plan to continue with their plans to transport the coffee by sail or will resort to less environmentally friendly—but safer—means of shipping. The one pound packages were to be sold by mail order from the Houston area via eBay.