Bay Islands May 21-June 28^th

The Bay Islands of Honduras consist of three main islands; they are Guanaja, Roatán, and Utila.  The reefs of these islands are part of the second largest barrier reef in the world. It was with much anticipation that we sailed toward Guanaja, our first of the islands.  You may recall from our last log that we had a wonderful spinnaker sail from the Cayos Vivorillos to the anchorage of El Bight.  We had made an overnight passage and arrived about ten in the morning.  The night sail was uneventful with very little wind so we had the sails up and the engine going for part of the night.  We are rather impatient sailors and when the wind it very light we do not like to just sit out there and wait for it to pick up listening to the sails flap, hard to sleep and not good on the equipment.  We knew that the way into the anchorage of El Bight was something that you wanted to do in the daylight when you could see all the reefs.  We anchored off the large rock with the white house, not to close to shore for the name El Bight also seems to be appropriate as the no-see-ums (biting sand flies, with teeth seemingly the size of sharks teeth) that come from the shores. 

It was Saturday when we arrived in Honduras, and being that you are usually tired when finishing an overnight passage, we just stayed on the boat that day.  On Sunday we went exploring the area and found that there were many shrimp and lobster boats in the area.  The homes on the shores were beautiful with canals leading inland so that they could keep their boats on their property.  We found the Restaurant Manati, with the German couple Claus and Annette as our hosts.  They had lived in Guanaja for many years and they served the best sausage, spazel and red cabbage dinner.  You have to love getting great German food in a remote anchorage on a small island in a primarily Spanish speaking country.  The view from their open restaurant was gorgeous, and it was easy to see why they enjoyed living in the area.  We learned from our hosts that there was a very large Ex-Pat community on the island and a large group of Germans too.  Annette also told us that the best day to shop in town was Wednesday after the trading ships arrived with all the fresh vegetables.  So we went to town the following day of Monday to check into the country.  We were met at the docks by Red who welcomed us and told us that he would take us around the town of Bonacca where the .  Bonacca is a small island off Guanaja where about 8000 of the 10,000 residents of the island are crammed.  Maybe they cluster there to get away from the no-see-ums???.  We first went to the Port Captain to give him copies of our boat papers, then we stopped at the bank to get some Honduran money, limperia about 19L to the US dollar.  Finally we went to immigration where we had our passports stamped, visas attached and paid our $3 per person (US) for the privilege of visiting all the Bay Islands.  After some of the other countries that we had visited, this fee was a fantastic value. 

Thursday came very quickly and since our anchorage of El Bight was about 2nm from Bonacca so we decided to go rather early while the bay waters were still calm.  We got to town just as they were unloading the trading ship. Many loads of vegetables were loaded off the ship and quickly carried or pushed on hand carts down the narrow sidewalks of the town to the different vegetable stands and stores.  We also got a real kick out of the cows and goats that were also being transported by the trading ship.  There are no cars in the town of Bonacca so the streets or alleys are narrow; every square inch appears to be filled with masonry and wooden houses on stills.  Now the houses are not like they are in the San Blas, these homes appeared to be rather modern. We walked down one alley to find the shrimp man, for we had been told that there was one man who lived in a turquoise house had the best shrimp to sell.  We found his house but we also found that it was the end of the off season for shrimp  and he was down to his last bag.  The season was starting at the first of the month and he would again have many pounds of shrimp to sell. 

While at El Bight we went to another German restaurant owned by Hans for barbequed pizza.  One of the other cruisers in the anchorage had told everyone about it, so we were all ready for a party.  We arrived at his outdoor table area and watched as he cooked the pizzas on the grill.  Many of the fresh vegetables on the pizza came right out of Hans’ garden.  It took awhile to cook the pizza over the wood fire but the crust was delicious.  We had all sprayed ourselves thickly with bug spray (die no see-um die) so it was pretty safe to eat outside at dusk. 

On Friday we decided to move to Graham’s Cay, this Cay had been recommended by cruising friends who thought it was the best anchorage on the whole island.  It was not far from El Bight so it took us about an hour to get to the new anchorage.  They have mooring balls, but we decided to drop anchor in 19 feet of water instead of trusting the mooring.  We went ashore to find a delightful resort with a restaurant, bar, pools for lobster, rays, and large fish.  These are all pets of Graham as are the peacocks and other animals that roam freely.  We had a great dinner of Wahoo prepared by the cook Reggie who came out of the kitchen to see how we enjoyed the meal.  We stayed at this anchorage for three days and I think that we ate two dinners at the restaurant.  It was a very neat place.

Finally on Monday we decided to go around to the other side of the island and anchor at Michael’s Rock.  This was an awesome anchorage with some great snorkeling.  We got the anchor down and a panga came by to invite us to a dive resort nearby to come to happy hour.  We went and experienced a wonderful sunset from their porch The owners girlfriend had been pouring drinks, possibly some for herself and she poured quite liberal drinks, read that fill the 8oz glass with booze and ice, NICE bartender J. At the resort we talked about dive and snorkeling sites.  We were told that right by Michael’s Rock was a great site.  We tried it the next day and were delighted to find great coral formations and many canyons to explore.  We set up the Hooka compressor which would allow us to explore to depths of 60 feet.  We cruised between the deep coral walls looking at the formations and fish.  It was truly a special place.

It was a 6 hour sail from Michael’s Rock, Guanaja to Port Royal, Roatán.  We were not in a hurry so with 10 knots of wind we were happy to be traveling 5 knots SOG (speed over ground).  Since we had not had internet while at Michael’s Rock, Hank went below, to try out our Tigo stick modem while sailing and was quite surprised to be getting better signal than we had gotten in El Bight.  You gotta love technology when it works properly. 

We were looking for a place called Mango Cay Resort which was in the middle of Port Royal.  We called on the VHF radio and they explained the entrance to the bay and that they offered free moorings.  They explained that the mooring ball that they wanted us to use was the one that was designed for their own boat.  He knew that it would be strong enough for us since their boat was larger.  Mango Creek Resort was a delightful place and we had many fun times with other cruisers.  Terry and Patrice the owners of Mango Creek were very accommodating, allowing a pot luck to be organized on their cooks day off, having happy hours, giving tours of their property (which was awesome) and explaining the best snorkeling spots.  They had two baby parrots that they were raising and it was fun to see them fed them  parrot food.  I have a picture taken inside the resort but Terry is slightly out of focus.

We had a great afternoon of snorkeling in an area called “the horseshoe” for even though the water inside the reef was rather rough, inside the horseshoe it was relatively calm.  It was here that we saw our second Lionfish.  The lionfish is very invasive and its beautiful feathery fins are venomous.  Since it has no natural enemies, it is taking over the reef; it is recommended that you destroy any lionfish that you see.  When we mentioned this to Patrice, she was very upset for she had seen how quickly they were taking over and she feared for the conch that she was trying to protect.  Whenever Patrice sees a small conch while snorkeling she brings it back to a protected area by her dock.  She wants the conch to grow large and she knows that the locals will take them at any size for food.  With so much fish available it is a shame to collect the smaller conch.

Our next anchorage was French Harbour which is a very large bay and a great tourist area.  We followed our waypoints carefully because the bay gets shallow and we were heading to the far northeast; to a place called Fantasy Island.   Fantasy Island is a dive resort and a small marina.  The dock master Jerry, organized many activities for the anchored out cruising community and he was very helpful in helping us find our way around the town of French Harbour.  After a short dinghy ride and tying up the dinghy next to the big shrimp boats, we explored the town.  We found a wonderful grocery store, a bulk gourmet store, and my favorite the place to buy the best shrimp in town.  

We went to town in the resort’s mini-van for a wonderful chicken piccata dinner which included sangria and tiramisu gelato all made by the Caribbean Pizza Kitchen.  There were about 20 of us and it was a fun outing.  The following Thursday, the same restaurant brought salads and pizzas to our happy hour at the resort.  The pizza, ours a Mediterranean, was super and our Chinese chicken salad was great too.  People wonder about the food we eat when cruising and this might tell you that you can get pretty much anything.  Each Saturday there is a BBQ potluck to make sure that the entire anchor out cruisers get to know each other. So, you can see that the dock master at the resort is a very busy guy, organizing so many fun things.  

 Arch’s Iguana Farm that was right by where we had anchored so we took the dinghy, tied it up at the dock, and climbed the stairs to the “farm.”  Less a farm than the house of a serious iguanaphile, everywhere you look you see iguanas. Here we were told that they have about 4 thousand iguanas and we decided not to try to count them, I think it was a language problem and they "only" had 400 of these creatures.  But still can you imagine having 400 huge lizards roaming around your house??  They gave us some leaves to feed them and boy did they come running to get a bite of a leaf.  It was good that we were not afraid of them for when you thought you were feeding a few, soon you had a large group.

We went through some rather windy nights at anchor, one night the wind was blowing 30 to 35knots and a couple of boats decided to move to an inner lagoon or take a mooring ball.  Equinox was fine so we stayed where we were and only wished we were closer in to shore when we dinghy to the resort in the afternoon.  Several times the wind was blowing so that we were drenched when we arrived. The resort had a small ultra light aircraft that they took tourists for rides; we enjoyed seeing it coming through the anchorage on its final approach to land.

Finally we decided it was time to head around the island to West End, but first we stopped at Barefoot Cay Marina to check out where we had tentative reservations for the month of December.  We also needed to fill our tank with diesel so we called ahead to see that they had fuel.  They did but since it took quite a while getting the fuel in our tank, we decided to stay the night.  We didn’t want to get to West End in bad light for remember we were dealing with reefs and they are not always shown so clearly on our charts. Barefoot Cay was a beautiful place and we made dinner reservations and then headed for the pool.  When we checked in, they warned us to wear bug spray all the time, not just at dusk.  We didn’t take their advice at the pool area, so unfortunately we came away with many no-see-um bites.  Turns out the resort is owned by some folks from the Seattle area, small world. 

The next morning we sailed around the island to West End, here there were many mooring balls inside the Roatán Marine Park and we had been told that you could rent a mooring ball for $40 a week or $10 a night.  Of course we selected a week when we went into town the next day to pay for our morning. The town had dirty streets but it is a regular beach town with many dive shops and many tourist divers.  Friends said that you could go to the lighthouse restaurant at the far edge of the bay to tie up your dinghy, so we did.  Whenever we use the facilities of restaurant we always go in give them some business.  Here we ordered turn burgers that were made with great chunks of freshly caught tuna.  The restaurant has a great view of the town from their patio. They also have a walkway that leads through the restaurant and out to the main dirt street.  Since we were looking for the park headquarters to pay our fees, we walked up and down the town. This Park is a diving paradise with so many mooring balls located on the various dive sites.  You really just had to look outside your boat to see where the tour dive boats were going and then head for a vacant mooring ball.  We first chose to go close to our boat and see if there was a way to get through the reef without anchoring or using a mooring on the outside of the reef.  We found that there was a way we could be the dinghy through without injuring the reef.  We did some snorkeling and found some beautiful fan coral. West End has a lot to offer in the way of a tourist town, nice restaurants, beach bars, good hotels, souvenir shops and even a small grocery store.  But undoubtedly people come for the diving so we again got out the Hooka air compressor and went diving.   

For Fathers’ Day weekend we organized a cruisers get together at the Lighthouse Restaurant.  They have a champagne brunch for $16 that allows you to have as much champagne as you want.  Now cruisers are famous for the way that they can eat and that they are never late when something is all you can eat or drink.  The food was wonderful and we might have made a dent in the restaurant’s liquor budget for I think that we all have several glasses, the good news is that they still do this brunch every Sunday! We also had another get together where we decided to meet friends at a beach bar to try their mojitos.  It was happy hour and the price was reduced but the flavor and the amount of liquor and mint was not reduced.  We all decided that they were a perfect drink for this Caribbean island.

We had been at West End for a week and we were both getting rather anxious about the weather and not being in an exposed anchorage.  Hank received daily emails from Chris Parker and we would discuss the progress of a named storm Alex.  After talking to Chris about the weather in our area heading to the coast of Guatemala, we decided to leave Roatán and head toward the mainland.  We knew that we would not have a lot of wind, but we felt that we needed to get going for safety sake. So we included a sunrise picture and a sunset picture as we leave this gorgeous site. 

We left on June 22 for a ten hour motor sail to Laguna El Diamente on the coast of Honduras.  We were somewhat anxious leaving the mooring because we had quite a squall a half hour before we were going to leave.  We started to second guess our decision to leave.  Our friends who were going to leave with us, decided to wait for more wind, but we knew that we had a great engine besides sails and we went for it.  We were glad that we went!  The wind was between 4 to 10 knots, but we were able to keep the speed around 6 knots with the help of the sails and the engine.  We arrived at the coast line, Hank looked at the first anchorage of Puerto Encondito and decided to head for the protect anchorage of Laguna El Diamente.  Again we made a good decision for even though there was only one other boat with us that first day, by the time we left for Guatemala there were 9 boats at anchor.  The wind picked up the following day, with high sea action and we decided to wait for a better weather window.  We stayed 6 days at this anchorage.  Our friends who did not leave West End when we did had some pretty nasty weather and some rather rolly seas at the moorage field, but they too were OK.

On the 28^th we left at 5:15 in the morning to head for Tres Puntas which is the anchorage right across from the Livingston, Guatemala.  Livingston has a sand bar that most boats need to cross on a high rising tide.  We had previously contacted by email an agent Rene.  He had our paper work and passport numbers so he would be ready to check us in to Guatemala as soon as we arrived across the bar.  Our night at anchor just past Tres Puntas was not the best but you can handle just about anything for a night and we wanted to leave early in the morning.  We crossed the bar at 7:50 AM seeing the lowest depth of 1.3 feet below the keel.  We were in Livingston waiting to check into the country. More about our check in included in the next sailing log.