In 1972, I sailed with three friends to Belize and Guatemala from Florida on a 45-ft ketch, the Thai. It was owned and skippered by Ed Valier of Ft. Lauderdale. The vessel was a wooden Stonington.
After visiting Lago Izabal in Guatemala, we replenished in Livingston. Upon leaving Livingston, we visited an island called Frenchman’s Caye, just off the coast of Punta Gorda, Belize. It was owned by a former Navy underwater demolitions expert (frogman), Richard “Dick” Moore.
Dick was considered the first real underwater SCUBA diving pioneer in Belize. He settled on Frenchman’s Caye after living in the Yucatan and diving the shipwreck “Matanceros,” a Spanish galleon that was apparently bound for the New World from the Old World.
Dick ran a successful diving business from Fenchman’s Caye, throughout the Great Honduras Reef during the 1960s and 1970s.
He owned the entire island and enjoyed the luxury of “spreading out”—He scattered all of his living stations over the whole island.
This photo is of Dick Moore’s island washroom, thus “Island Loo.”
Thai was moored at Frenchman’s Caye for about three days before getting underway for Placencia Cove, Belize.