Andiamo!

So, just a couple of weeks after leaving Andiamo in Rio Dulce, and making a visit to Florida, I am in London. I got here last Thursday after a nice redeye flight.

There are few things nicer than summertime in London, that’s for sure. The weather so far has been pretty awesome. In fact, it’s pretty hot right now. I’m wearing my flip flops again, which is really refreshing. It’s kinda nice to have this kind of cosmopolitan civilization for a change after enjoying life in the third world for the past several months. Too bad it’s so damn expensive here though! I’ve met up with some friends who live here, and have been able to enjoy seeing London more like a native than a tourist, which is always better, trust me!

I’ve been to some great little pubs and bars, and tonight I’m invited to go to a party where you have to be on a LIST! It’s been awhile since I’ve been on any list.

I’ll probably be here a couple more days before making my way under the English Channel to Belgium where I’ll be sure to meet up with Raf, Mietsie and the rest of the Belgian gang. Looking forward to that. I also hope to catch up with my old Isla Mujeres cohorts, Frederik (who is in Holland), and Steffen (who is in Germany for a short while) while I can. So that’s the plan for now.

Let’s see how long I stick to it.

Comment from: Jodi [Visitor]

London sounds fun…say hello to the Belgians for me and tell Frederick I still know how to cuss in Dutch! 🙂

2005-06-21 @ 07:37

Comment from: Bonnie [Visitor]

You do get around! Please say hello to Raf. Oh, I am down 28 lbs. and counting!

2005-06-21 @ 11:24

These pics cover the time that Lotte and Pauline crewed aboard Andiamo. With them as crew, Andiamo got to Cayos Cochinos, Roatan, and we almost made it to Guanaja (long story, read the post about it!). In fact, Lotte took most of these pics! They came aboard knowing next to nothing about sailing, and ended up becoming very able sailors in a short time. Not to mention that Andiamo got slammed with the worst weather we’ve seen at sea, and the girls handled it with aplomb. Most surprising to me were their excellent attitudes when things did go hairy.

I’m proud of them, and we had some great times onboard Andiamo, despite the many challenges.

Before Andiamo left for Cayos Cochinos and Roatan, we were invited to a fun little daylong party out at Water Cay by Monica and the folks at Tranquila. Water Cay is an uninhabited Cay that is mainly a “park” that you can boat up to and hang out at all day. This was a tradition of theirs that they do after ‘Semana Sante’ is over to let off a little steam after a crazy time on the island. There was a lot of beer, food, rum and beer. So, of course we couldn’t say no.

Some final shots of our Utila activities before we left:

Our sail to Cayos Cochinos:

After our lovely 2 night stay in Cayos, we headed out towards Roatan’s French Harbour:

From French Harbour, we ventured over to Roatan’s West End, but we didn’t quite make it because we got hit by a nasty squall. The posting titled “A three hour tour” tells all about it, here are the pictures:

Once we got the boat squared away, and the weather stabilized, we headed off to the West End of Roatan:

Some pics of our attempt to get to Guanaja, which was foiled by horrendous winds, current, and the girls getting pretty majorly seasick. So we aborted the mission and headed back to West End.

Since we had just left West End, we opted to go to another part of Roatan. So we went back around to the south-facing side, and ventured to Dixons Cove.

After leaving Dixons Cove, we headed back to the West End for a couple more days, and then it was back to Utila. We wanted to try for Guanaja one more time, but my laptop crashed, thus my primary navigation tool, and we decided just to head back to Utila instead.

Being back in Florida even just a few months since my last visit here in March is surreal to me. I feel like it’s been much longer. Being in the islands of Honduras and Guatemala over the past months, and the many adventures that I’ve had on Andiamo have made it almost impossible for me to believe that it all fits into a period of just 3 months. The past couple of weeks in Rio Dulce before leaving for Florida have been rather interesting and eventful, despite the fact that I was in “checkout mode” when I arrived there. The “Sea Cadets” had all done a wonderful job as crew. I enjoyed having them onboard so much that I invited to stay onboard for Andiamo’s outing to Lago Izabal for one last 2-3 day jaunt before tying up permanently for the rest of the summer. Of the three, only Mahia decided to stick around. Katherine and Sabrina both had other plans and were quick to make them happen. So the day after we got to Rio, we bid our goodbyes to them as they caught their bus from Frontreras.

It was great having Mahia around for the next few days, because there was much to do on Andiamo to get her ready for her summer-long stay. She was willing to pitch in anyway she can, and she was good company to boot. Too bad she was deftly allergic to the cats, but she put up with that pretty well, despite the many discomforts.

Since we were heading out to Lago Izabal just a couple of days later. The marina decided not to tie us up at our permanent spot as we would be all blocked in and it would be a pain for us to leave a couple of days later. Instead, they gave us a temporary spot at a med mooring until the coming Tuesday, which was the day we were to leave for Lago Izabal. Miet, my Belgian friend from Antigua who had been on Andiamo already twice before, was on her way over with 2 other Belgian friends of hers. They would meet us at Frontreras on Tuesday, and we’d head onward to the lake. It was a good plan.

Unfortunately, over the weekend, the marina informed me that the boat that usually takes our spot was going to be back on Monday, and that we would need to clear out of there on Monday and not Tuesday. So I decided that we would go to the lake a day early and do some sailing around the lake for that day rather than just sit at a hot anchorage until Tuesday waiting for Miet and her friends. So that’s what we did.

We left there on Monday, close to noon, and headed into the lake. It was a nice clear day, and winds were brisk despite the early time of day. Usually, the winds don’t start really blowing until later in the afternoon, close to sunset time. But there we were in 15 knot or so winds just having a grand ol’ time.

Since Mahia had never seen the Agua Caliente aka “hot waterfalls” at Finca Paraiso, I decided that we’d anchor there for the night. The weather was getting pretty dreary, and fast. So we dropped anchor, and watched the storm clouds roll in from the mountains. Then the rains came, and it was some serious rain. We basically couldn’t get any further out of the boat then just outside the companionway before getting absolutely drenched. The storms pounded for hours. There was quite a spectacular lightning and thunder show happening on the mountains around us. So that’s how it was to be for the next several hours, so we ended up just watching some dvd’s and having some pasta for dinner before turning in early.

The next morning, the skies were absolutely clear, and it was a perfect day to check out the hot waterfalls. We dinghied in, meeting Julio upon our arrival. Julio is the manager of one of the properties on the Finca, and was kind enough to come and help us off the rockpile the last time we came here back in February. He remembered me and Andiamo, and showed us his usual kind hospitality. After spending a few minutes catching up with him, we started our walk over to the hot waterfalls, where we would spend the next few hours swimming and hanging out.

We still had to head back to Frontreras to pick up Miet and her friends, so we had to cut the swimming a little short, and head back to Andiamo. We got there, started her up, raised anchor and took off for town. We were running a little late, so I decided to just run the motor and get there asap. Lucky for us, because Miet was beginning to worry a bit.

We got to Frontreras, got Miet on the radio, and picked her, Steven and Saartje up with the dinghy. After some quick provisioning, we pulled up our anchor and headed back into the lake. We were hoping to make it to Denny’s Beach for that night, because we heard that they were having their monthly full moon party that night. The wind was blowing pretty good, and we were going dead downwind, so I put the sails up “wing on wing”, and off we went. We were running at a brisk 8 knots in excellent conditions. I’m not a big fan of dead downwind sailing, but if you have to do it, these are the conditions you want.

During this wonderful evening and night sail, we had something really REALLY embarrassingly stupid happen, and I’m so bummed about it, that I don’t even want to talk about it. It would have been enough to ruin the mood of the rest of the trip, but I refused to let that happen, and we just went on with life. But to this day I kick myself about what I let happen. Oh well…

Well, turned out nothing really was happening at Dennys beach that night, as the full moon party turned out to have been the PREVIOUS night. But it didn’t matter to us anyway, because we never made it to Dennys beach that night anyway. I apparently had a bad waypoint on my gps, which got us to a beach that was a bit south of where Dennys beach actually was. Since it was nighttime and I couldn’t see much of the shore, it was quite difficult to tell where we were. So rather than go crazy going up and down the shore looking for it, I decided that we would just drop our anchor for the night.

Miet and Saartje whipped up a great dinner, and we ended up eating in the cockpit, anchored at a place that we didn’t really know where it exactly was. But then, that’s cruising sometimes.

The next morning, it was clearly apparent that we were nowhere near Denny’s Beach. So we raised anchor, and went up the shore a little to the north and found it where we were supposed to have gone. We tied up at one of their moorings, and swam in for some refreshments. That’s when we found out that we missed the big full moon party, but we really didn’t because it got pretty much rained out by those spectacular storms that we watched all night on Monday.

After spending a few more hours there, and having some lunch. We moved on up the lake, stopping at a town for some additional “supplies” (as in beer and mixers!), and continued on up the lake, searching for what I’d heard to be an excellent anchoring spot called “El Refugio”. According to my guides, it was a great little cove that was in a very isolated part of the lake. That description turned out to be true. We were the only boat there. We arrived just before sunset, dropped anchor just in time to get a good swim and watch the spectacular sunset show. We grilled some fresh robalo that I had bought in town the day before, and enjoyed dinner in the cockpit. At night, there was no artificial light whatsoever anywhere around us, except for the flashlight on the occasional passing cayuco carrying a fisherman up the river that ends in the sac of the cove.

The next morning, we started out with a good sail out of the cove, and onward to another part of the lake that had a few navigable rivers that went into a dense jungle area. Unfortunately, the lake’s water was low, and the depths weren’t what I’d hope they’d be. So getting up these little river fingers would be dicey. Instead we opted to turn back towards Finca Paraiso, so Steven and Saartje can check out the hot waterfalls. We did that instead, had yet another wonderful afternoon at the falls, and ended up getting thrown out at closing time.

We got back on the boat, and raised our sails and headed out with the wind. The wind kicked up to about 20 knots and we had an awesome evening sail. Only problem I had was that I had to find the entrance to the river in the dark. I’d done it before, but it’s indeed a pain. But we did it, and found the river without a hitch.

Within another half hour, we were anchored outside of town and bringing Miet, Steven and Saartje back to town where they would get a room for the night. They had to catch an early morning bus back to Antigua, so they decided it would be better for them to be ashore. We bid our goodbyes to them, and they gave me a really really nice watercolor print of the main square in Brussels as a gift, that was drawn by Steven’s uncle.

The next morning, we headed back to the marina. It took awhile for them to get our dock space available, but they eventually did. We tied up at the spot where Andiamo would hang out for the rest of the summer.

For the next few days, Mahia was nice enough to stay and help me get the boat prepped for Andiamo’s extended summer stay. There was much to do and it was good to have her help, that’s for sure. It took awhile, but we managed to get Andiamo pretty much squared away.

Having a day or two to spare before I would head out to Florida, we hopped a bus to Flores and Tikal to check out the ruins. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did the first time around, but I did, which was cool. After that little junket, we headed back to Rio Dulce, where I tied up my final loose ends. I bid my goodbyes to the cats, the marina folks, and Mahia, who went on to continue her Central America traveling, and hopped my Guatemala City flight to Miami. I was SUPER lucky to make my bus out of Frontreras, considering I overslept by an hour. The bus ride was long and bumpy, but I made it to the airport intact. About four hours later, I was back in the USA, at my least favorite airport on the planet, Miami. A few hours after that, I was in Daytona, having beers with Chris, Pam and several other good friends. It was a surreal ending to a very surreal day.

So now, I’m in “summer” mode. Despite some unpleasantness I have to deal with in regards to Mahi, I’m ready to enjoy the summer. My travels will take me to Europe for some extended visits with friends and adventures into Eastern Europe, where I’ve never been. I suspect that’s just for starters. As I said on my previous post, who knows where I’ll end up.

In the meantime, “Don’t steal my sunshine…”

Been thinking about that all day, and how much I miss him. I especially miss him now since I’m in Florida now for the next week or two, hanging out with my friend Chris and visiting with other friends and family.

I’ll be getting caught up on pics and bring everything up to date shortly. Just been having trouble making time for it. So much else to do…

In the meantime, here’s for a happy birthday to Pop.

Comment from: Michael Greaney [Visitor]

Tony,
Say Hello to Chris for me. Tell him I’ll be down in August so we can meet up for a beer or two.
Mike

2005-06-07 @ 09:50

Finally got the boat back in the water last weekend, got her over to Utila from La Ceiba for a final few days of preparation and crew recruitment for the jaunt back to Rio Dulce. I ended up having to bring Andiamo back solo, which was interestingly the first time I ever had to do that. It was cool, and I even anchored solo ok. I didn’t sail because winds were light, and I didn’t want to raise my new main with just me aboard. All I needed was something to go wrong with it at the wrong time, which has always been the case anyway.

The day after I got back, we put together a fun day of sailing around Utila with a bunch of people. Monica (from Tranquila) and Claire, the Irish dive instructor, who was spending her last day on the island that Sunday, put it together for the most part. I promised Claire I’d get her out on the boat before she left. A bunch of people from around town showed up for the trip. It ended up being a nice group of people, about 10 of us total. We headed out about noon, and got back in time for sunset. There was some light breeze, which gave us a nice easy sail along the Utila coast. There was lots of food, beer, cocktails, beer, more beer and then we ran out of anything. Probably a good thing too.

All week last week, I got some loose ends tied up, took care of some final issues on Andiamo, which was looking pretty damn good with her newly spot-painted, polished and buffed topsides, and new main! I put the word out for crew, and within a matter of hours, I had 3 crewmembers lined up. All Americans too, which was another first on Andiamo. The crew was going to consist of Mahia (yes, that’s her name, no snickers!) from Colorado, Katherine from Oregon, and Sabrina from California. None had any sailing experience except for Mahia, whose only sailing experience was her trip on Andiamo that fateful Sunday. So after giving them the lowdown, I affectionately gave them the moniker, “Sea Cadets”. Not sure if they liked it or not, but it served them well.

While getting some last minute details ready for our Thursday departure, a storm started brewing up in the Pacific off the coast of El Salvador. It ended up becoming Tropical Storm Adrian, the first official storm of the hurricane season, which hadn’t even started yet!
The storm was going to cross Central America and find its way to the Caribbean, and pass over right around the Bay Islands.

My first instinct was to wait and see what the storm did, but then I realized that I would much rather be up the Rio Dulce, then on Utila if the storm blew by. It was not going to be anything more than a tropical depression by the time it reached there anyway, having been weakened by the mountainous Honduran and Guatemalan landmass. So despite more conservative wisdom from others, I decided we would leave, albeit a bit earlier on Thursday.

The ride over was quite easy, but not much wind. We motorsailed most of the way. The winds did kick up in the middle of the night, but unfortunately it was right on our nose. I kept the motor going most of the time because we really had to keep our schedule of getting into Livingston at high tide, which was 5:30 AM Friday. We did get a few final hours of good light breeze sailing on our approach to Livingston. We made it to the mouth of the Rio Dulce right on time, went over the bar of the river with nary a single touch (a first on Andiamo!). We dropped our anchor off the main dock at Livingston, ending what was an absolutely flawless 17-hour passage.

So after another wonderful ride up the Rio Dulce (a first for all three Sea Cadets), we tied up at our usual dock, where Andiamo will be for awhile during the next few months during the inevitable hurricane season. I had too busy of a hurricane season last year to even consider being out there this year. Nope this season, I’m taking a break. I’ll be doing some overseas traveling, and possibly a visit to Florida during this time. The cats will be hanging out with the boat under close supervision of course. Which is great for them because they will be able to venture off the boat around the marina. Lots of room to roam. It’s relatively safe for them, because they can’t go very far on account of lots of dogs on the property. But they can go far enough to get a nice “break” from the boat.

Waiting to hear back from some friends in Antigua to see about doing one last junket to Lago Izabal for a couple of days before getting Andiamo nestled at the dock for the whole summer.

So it’s time for the summer and some new possibilities. Who knows where I’ll end up.

Comment from: MIchael Greaney [Visitor]

Tony,
We’ll be in FLA in August and again in November. Drop me a line and let me know when you’ll be there.
Later Dude,
Mike G

2005-05-22 @ 01:38

So, things have been slow and quiet onboard Andiamo lately, accented by breakneck fast moments of insanity (more on that later). Miet and Linda went back to Guatemala about a couple of weeks ago after a week’s stay onboard that went by in the blink of an eye. They got their PADI certs, so they’re happy, but I think they would have liked to stay a little longer. It was nice having them onboard. I’ll probably run into them once more when I get back to Rio Dulce. I’ve been waiting on my replacement main for going on almost one month now. Honduran customs and DHL have made the whole process of me getting my sail an absolute pain in the ass. This kind of incompetence makes it pretty easy to see why things work the way they do in banana republics like Honduras. It’s a shame too. Because countries like these have all the tools and the makings to be efficient and prosperous. But the culture at all levels of government and bureaucracy are such that progress, if any exists, is painfully slow and torturous. It just doesn’t matter to them to make things better and easier.

The worst part is that had I contacted La Ceiba shipyard FIRST, they would have instructed me on the right way to get something shipped to them, and I would have had it by now duty free and for far less shipping cost than what I paid DHL. Instead, I just assumed that DHL knew what needed to be done, and well, here I am, still with no main. Talk about expensive lessons.

Andiamo is now in the La Ceiba Shipyard, getting some bottom paint work done as well as some repairs on my rudder, thanks to Roatan’s horrendous reef at Big Bight. I wasn’t going to get the bottom painting done until after the summer, but the rudder repair pushed that schedule up by a few months. I also managed to get a good paint guy to do a once over on my topside hull paint, which had come to get pretty banged up since leaving Mexico, for a VERY reasonable cost. Hopefully all the work will be done by Wednesday of this coming week, and I hope to have my main before I leave, if there is any kind of a god.

I chose to spare the cats of the horrific concept of getting their home pulled out of the water and having guys bang around it all day. So they have been duly “interned” at a friend’s house on Utila while the tasks at hand are completed. I’m sure they are enjoying their shore time. I checked on them yesterday when I went to Utila for Monica’s (one of the owners of Tranquila) birthday. They’re doing fine, much to my relief.

In other news, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks on Utila working on the boat, and getting my advanced open water cert. This meant doing a wreck dive, a night dive, a deep dive to 100 feet, and a couple other specialized dives.

The wreck dive was at the site of the Halliburton. A pretty big oil freighter that was purposely sunk just outside of Utila’s East End to create an artificial reef, and a dive site. It’s only been in the water about 7 years, and the reef growth on the ship in that relatively short time was pretty surprising. The night dive was out by Pigeon Cay, where we went in with dive lights, and saw some pretty amazing sea life that you just don’t get to see during the day. Then we killed the lights while we kneeled on the sandy bottom, and watched as the bioluminescence from millions of small fish and plankton permeated the water around us. It was really something, and made me want to do lots more of night diving. I actually did some night diving back in the Virgin Islands about 15 years ago, but I had forgotten how incredibly awesome it is.

So now for the aforementioned freakish moment. The last night before Miet and Linda were supposed to leave Utila, I had one of the freakiest, scariest experiences ever. Here’s the story:

I was up at Tony P’s house (who’s been in Texas), using his dsl connection to get some updates done on my laptop, which had recently crashed. It took much longer than I would have liked, and it ran me late. I was supposed to meet up with Miet and Linda to get them back to the boat so they can get ready for a dinner engagement. But I knew that Miet knew where the dinghy was, and if necessary they can get to the boat on their own, and just come back with it.

I headed down to Tranquila when I was done, expecting that Miet and Linda were going to be coming back from going to the boat to change for the dinner they were going to. They did show up, and I jumped in the dinghy to go shower and change. I was going to play some poker with a few other fellow regular players at Tranquila in about a half hour. So I dinghied out to the boat by myself, did my thing, and got back in the dinghy to head back to shore. After I left the boat, I was dinghying back to Tranquila at full speed when one of the motor’s mounts slipped off the transom board. I saw afterward that a huge chunk of wood peeled off the transom board, right underneath where one of the outboard’s mounting bolts was.

Anyway, the motor then suddenly pivoted to one side, because the other mount bolt was still holding it. And then that bolt came loose and the damn thing shot up RIGHT INTO THE AIR!!! STILL RUNNING!!!

I’m watching the motor fly in the air for what seemed like forever, and the fuel line connecting it to the tank pulled on it like a bungee cord and brought it back down to the water head first! I instinctively wanted to grab it to keep it from sinking, but it was upside down, and the motor was still RUNNING! So the prop was spinning like crazy. The motor went straight down into the water and down, down, down.

I realized after everything was over, which only took about five seconds total, that the shaft and the prop passed my head by a matter of about 8 inches on its way back down from space. Amazingly, the spinning prop touched nothing on me or the dinghy, whose respective soft tissue, semi-hard skull and inflatable bladders would have been no match for a spinning propeller. Count it as freakishly good luck.

Anyway, I’m now dazed and stunned at what just happened. It was nighttime, so of course there was no way I could go after it. So I paddled in to Tranquila with the one good oar I have on the dinghy, wet and pretty shook up. Some of my diver friends said that they would come and help me find it the next morning, and provide me with some lift bags to see if we can float it up to the top. I tried to chill out, but I was pretty freaked out the whole night at what happened.

I woke up quite early the next morning, didn’t get much sleep anyway. The water was perfectly still, no wind or current. So I got in the dinghy, rowed around where I thought the thing came off, and found it within 45 minutes or so, laying on one side, with the word “Tohatsu” blaring out at me. I dove in with a line, tied it to the outboard and pulled it back up myself. I brought it back to the boat, and put it on the motor mount with the help of Marcos, a fellow cruiser. I then washed it off with fresh water and lubricated it everywhere I can. I cleaned off all the electrical contacts I can find too. I was not sure if the thing would ever start again. But after some serious pulling to clear the valves of salt water and god knows what else, it STARTED! It ran rough for about 5 minutes or so, and then it started running normally again like nothing ever happened. I put it back on the dinghy, and rode it around for several minutes, and it purred like a kitten. Unbelievable. I hope it just keeps on running now.

So as of now, the boat sits in the yard at La Ceiba, I continue to wait for my main (which I should have by Monday now, but who knows) and hope that the work gets done on Andiamo by Wednesday or so of this week. In the meantime, I think I’ll take a couple of side trips up to Copan and San Pedro Sula so I can check out some other parts of Honduras.

Oh, and I’ll get the rest of my restored postings and pics back up here during this downtime.

After about 10 days in Roatan, we decided it was time to try to get to Guanaja. Lotte and Pauline were getting a little restless because their time in the Bay Islands and aboard Andiamo was winding down, and they wanted to get as much in as possible. So, we decided that we would head up the northside of Roatan, anchor at a place called Big Bight for the night, and then continue on in the morning towards Guanaja. The east trades were blowing, which meant that we would be dealing with pretty much head-on winds the whole way to Guanaja. This meant doing at least two wide tacks to get us at the right angle with the wind so we can head in to Guanaja.

We left West End in Roatan a little later than I would have liked, about 2-3pm. This gave us about 2 good hours of daylight for us to get into Big Bight’s anchorage, which should have been more than enough. We had a brisk sail up the Roatan Coast, doing a tack off and back onto the coast towards the entrance at Big Bight. When we got close to the Big Bight entrance. I checked our position on the chart against landmarks and a visual map of the coast. It all looked like we were in the right position. I noticed that there were no markings to show the entrance through the reef into Big Bight. The chart showed that the opening in the reef was quite wide, about 100 meters. So I carefully motored in, with Lotte at the bow watching for any reef heads.

The water stayed deep for quite a time as we got closer and closer into the reef. Just when I thought we were “in”, we rubbed a reef head pretty good. We were stuck for a while until we found the deep water just to port of us. I managed to get into that deep water, which looked to be the same deep water area that we were on to get into the bight. When we rubbed up on the reef, I felt that it put a strain on the rudder, and didn’t want to damage it any further. So I opted to turn around and head back out into open water rather than risk hitting something else and risking further rudder damage.

The sun was going down fast, and the last thing I wanted to do was get stuck on a reef in the dark. It was also too late for us to get back to West End with any daylight. So I suggested that we do a night sail offshore, and then head into Guanaja at first light. Considering it was only about 6pm, that meant that we would be sailing for a good 12 hours before getting to Guanaja. Lotte and Pauline agreed, and I set our course. We were going to go northeast of Roatan for about 30 miles, and then head in Southeast towards Guanaja and pass through between the east end of Roatan and Guanaja, this should give us the track we needed for 12 hours of sailing time.

So we headed out into some pretty steady wind of about 16-18 knots. We had our “borrowed” main from Refuge on the mast, and raised it up. Though it was a little small for my rig, it handled pretty well. We were on our track and sailing for what was to be the next 4-5 hours on this course. The further out we got, the higher the seas got, and the wind. For about the last hour of the leg, it turned into quite a bash-fest. Winds kicked up to 25 knots. We dropped the main, and sailed only on the Genoa. Pauline, who already was not 100%, started getting pretty seasick. Lotte also was not feeling very good from these seas. Guess I was just used to it, because I didn’t feel a thing. After doing our tack back towards Guanaja, the girls didn’t feel much better. I was hoping that the new angle would help make things a little easier on the boat, but it didn’t. Plus, we were facing a fierce current heading from the east at about 3-4 knots! This made our forward progress pretty bad. We were only gaining about 2-3 knots over ground per hour. At this rate, we wouldn’t get to Guanaja for another 10-12 hours!

After seeing the condition of the girls, and the fact that we were getting bashed pretty good by the seas, I made the call to turn the boat back and head to Roatan. At least in that direction, we’d be going with the seas, and that would make the ride a lot easier on them, as well as the boat. As much as I wanted to get to Guanaja, it simply wasn’t worth busting our butts and wearing ourselves out to do it.

After about 4-5 hours, we were back along the Roatan coast, heading toward the West End. Since none of us were thrilled about going right back to West End, I offered up the idea of going around to the south-facing side of the island. There were several coves and anchorages that we can check out and relax there for the day. If the weather proved to be more favorable the next day, we can head up to Guanaja via the south side of Roatan, rather than the north. My thinking was that the current would not be as strong on that side. So we passed West End, went around the island’s West Point, and proceeded on to Dixon Cove, which was about halfway up the island. It looked to be a nice peaceful anchorage, home to a few fishing boats.

The cove’s entry looked to be pretty easy on my charts and guides (but then again, so was Big Bight’s). Despite the very sinister-looking reefs on either side of the cove, the west one being crowned by a massive freighter that found its final resting place on it, the entrance was pretty deep, wide and painless. Much to my relief, I’d had my quota of hairy reef entrances!

We set our anchor at the inside end of the cove, and did some swimming, and prepared for lunch and dinner. Pauline swam over to a secluded beach off the boat and hung out there. I guess that meant that she was feeling better. I dove in to check the anchor to make sure that we were set ok. That night, we watched some DVD’s, and crashed early. Everybody was still pretty tired from the night before when we were getting bashed on our way to Guanaja. I turned on the anchor watch alarm on the laptop to make sure that if we dragged on our anchor, I would hear about it. This alarm goes through the boat’s stereo system, and if the boat moves more than 20 meters away from the point I set on the GPS, the alarm goes off.

At some point, one of the girls turned off the stereo, so the alarm would not be heard. This was unfortunate, because not only did we drag that night, we dragged clear across the cove! To the OTHER SIDE! I woke up to use the head, when I thought I’d pop my head out of the companionway hatch to see what was happening. Behind us there were nothing but TREES! Less than 25 feet away from us! I looked outside forward, and saw that we were now about 200 yards from where we were anchored before. Lucky for us, we were the only sailboat in the anchorage, and there was nothing anchored behind us. So we literally dragged almost a straight line to the other side of the cove. The anchor found some good mud to set in as we dragged, and it held again. While I was pretty freaked out at this whole thing, I was also glad and relieved that we set again, and didn’t end up on any shallow reefs or worse, in the mangroves and trees that were now towering right behind us!

After making absolutely sure that we were not dragging any further, we secured the anchor, and went back to sleep. The next morning, we headed out of Dixon Cove. The weather was ok, but not great. There were some heavy swells pumping in from the East, which is the direction we wanted to go to get to Guanaja. We decided to just give up on Guanaja for this trip, and head back to West End, where we would spend a couple more days before heading back to Utila. Going with the seas, it was a pretty easy and fast trip.

So I guess there’s always next time to try for Guanaja.