The Bay Islands – Honduras

We had a break in the predominantly easterly winds and that allowed us to make the run from Roatan over to Guanaja (Gwa na ha), the most eastern island in the chain. We anchored in El Bight and then took the dinghy back to the main town. The town, some times called Bonaca, or Ganaja or El Cayo is located on an island beside the main island. Confused yet?  There are no cars here and the “roads” are slightly wider than a sidewalk. Everyone and everything is in close proximity.

From here it was back to Roatan with a stop in Port Royal. This bay and a few nearby make up the coastal section of the Port Royal National Park. This is a nearly 500-hectare section of the island set aside as a national park. This is reputed to be a favorite hide out for Captain Morgan in the pirate days as well. We were enjoying our walk around the bay when one of the local women approached us to show us a picture of a large crocodile that she had spotted on the beach. No swimming today!

A quick trip back to Jonesville for a day or two then on to the Roatan Yacht Club. Its conveniently close to the grocery store, Pharmacy, Hardware store and a restaurant. It has a pool with no crocodiles, so swimming was back on the schedule. Derick was running low on some prescription medication. We took the pill bottle to the Pharmacy. They looked at it, had the product on hand and were happy to sell us a month’s worth to get us back home. No doctor or prescription required.

The next day it was a lively sail to the “West End” of the island. Its reef enclosed beach has made this area very popular with the tourists. There are several hotels of various grades along the shoreline. Shops, bars and restaurants line the street. The Bay islands are known for the excellent scuba diving in the reefs and every other shop seems to be dive related. There are water taxis that spend the day zipping up and down the beach shuttling tourists between the hotels and the entertainment area and dive boats taking clients to and from the local dive spots.

In order to preserve the seabed from damage by the anchoring of many boats, they have installed dedicated anchoring buoys, all boats are required to use them. The system consists of a large metal “screw” that is put into the seabed or some other form of anchor, then a chain and rope are attached to that. There is a loop at the other end of the rope and a float or buoy attached there to keep it at the surface. The process is simple. Motor up to the buoy. Use a boat hook to grab the loop, place your mooring line through the loop and tie it back to your boat. The reality is that the ocean is never still, the wind will blow your boat around. When you get close to the buoy you usually can’t see it from the helm and boats don’t have brakes so you can’t exactly stop on a dime. Just know that some days you are going to pick one up like a pro and some days you are going to look like a rookie.

After a few days in the West End, it was time to move to the most westward island in the group, Utila. Also known for its diving, Utila is known as the budget west end. It lacks the “resort” type hotels and is more popular with the backpacking kind of traveler. It’s a fairly large bay that offers good wave protection but it’s a low island so the wind blows right over it. That’s the situation we are in right now. We have winds in the 20-knot range with gusts into the high 30’s. The bottom here is not great for holding anchors and several of the boats here, including us, have had to re anchor as the winds cause our boats to drag. It inevitably ends up being at night when the winds pick up and you feel the boat start to drag or the anchor alarm goes off. Hauling up and then resetting the anchor in the dark is just that much more of a pain in the ass but its better that hitting another boat or dragging onto the beach or the reef. We actually put a second anchor on our primary anchor chain, so we have 2 anchors holding us in place now.

Golf carts, quads, scooters and tuk tuks are the main form of transportation on the island. We rented a golf cart for a few hours and had fun checking out the island.

It looks like the high winds will be tapering off in a couple of days so we will take that opportunity to make the overnight passage to Livingston, Guatemala and the mouth of the Rio Dulce. We checked out of Honduras here in Utila. It was much easier than checking into the country. Both Immigration and the Port Captain are in the same building and its right at the waterfront, with no fees involved, so that was easy. The Rio Dulce is where we are leaving the boat for the hurricane season, it marks the end of this season. Hard to believe that in a few weeks we will be back in Vancouver.