So, after Raf left with Miet and Cil, Lotte and Pauline, the 2 Dutch girls with whom I worked with back in Guatemala, became Andiamo’s newest crew. I didn’t know what to expect, but figured that I’d at least give them a chance to help get the boat to Roatan.
A couple of days after they came aboard, we got the boat ready to head out to Cayos Cochinos, and then onward to Roatan.
We left for Cayos Cochinos on March 26th. We had to mostly motorsail there because winds were pretty light. But it was a nice trip nonetheless. The sea was smooth, saw lots of dolphins and sharks on the way too! The cays were spectacular to head into, and we got a mooring with few problems. I say that because when Pauline first tried to grab the mooring line with the boathook, she dropped it into the water. She dove in after it as I spun the boat back around. She handed the boat hook and the mooring line up to Lotte, who was on deck. She managed to get the line secured, and all was well. But it was funny the way it all happened.
The weather was pretty excellent. The evening we got there, I did notice that the boat’s deck had gotten quite dingy and dirty, so I proclaimed our first morning anchored in Cayos Cochinos a working morning. Lotte and Pauline didn’t seem to like that too much, but they came around to the idea of actually doing some work. We spent the first couple hours of the morning scrubbing the deck with bleach and sea water. We did manage to get it pretty clean.
After that, we dinghied into shore over by Plantation Beach to check things out. It was VERY quiet out there, and we pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves. We didn’t mind. We walked around, laid out in the sun, and got a little burned in the process. We headed back to the boat for lunch, and swam around the boat for the rest of the afternoon. Quiet, lazy and relaxing in the sun. These are the kinds of days that you wish you had more of when you are cruising.
The second day in Cayos Cochinos, we took a half-day sail around the cays to check things out. This time, the winds were pretty brisk, blowing over 20 knots. We had some excellent sailing that afternoon. I would have gone clear around Cayo Grande, but Pauline was starting to look a little seasick, so after about 3 hours of some very fun sailing, I headed back to the anchorage, where we barbecued some chicken and had some beer watching the sunset.
The third morning, we headed out through the reef pass between Cayo Grande and Cayo Pequeno, and headed on straight to Roatan. The winds were right where we wanted them to be for a nice close reach sail to Roatan. The girls were happy because there was going to be no tacking on this trip.
Seas were rolling, and the winds were easily gusting over 20 knots. We hit speeds of 9 knots even against the current. It was exhilarating sailing to say the least. Lotte and Pauline were getting a kick out of it, it being the first time they ever saw sailing like this.
When we started getting close to Roatan, I noticed that the winds’ gusts were increasing steadily. Since we were only about 3 or so miles from our destination of French Harbour, I decided to bring the sails in. Because of the strong current pushing on us from the northeast, it was pretty hard to keep the boat pointing into the wind so we can furl in the sails. We struggled in getting the genoa in, and REALLY struggled in getting the main back in. The main actually didn’t furl very well at all. It didn’t go all the way in and that meant that a big part of it was sticking out of the mast and flogging. At this point, I just wanted to get the boat into French Harbour, so we would deal with the main later.
Getting into French Harbour with such currents, and winds was interesting to say the least. Especially with the rusting wreck of a big ol’ freighter on your port side there to remind you that you are passing through some nasty reef! We made it in nonetheless, and looked for a good spot to drop our hook. It was strange to me, because there were not many yachts at all in this anchorage. There were only mostly fishing boats and large freighters. I knew that there was another anchorage around the spit that makes up French Harbour’s north side of the entrance. There were a lot more yachts there. I figured we’d drop the anchor where we were, wait for the weather to ease up, and then head over to French Cay Harbour which was on the other side. If all the yachts were there, there had to be a reason for that.
So I thought I found a good spot to drop our hook, just across the channel from the concrete pier where the large freighter ships were tied up. There was another yacht anchored over there, and it looked like he was holding pretty good. We proceeded to drop our anchor just behind that other yacht. That’s when we noticed a dock worker on the pier waving at us, and screaming. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, so he held up a radio. I turned on my radio and he told me that we were anchoring in a spot that was needed for a large freighter to turn in when it arrived, which would be shortly. So we had to move.
So we pulled up the anchor, and headed just ahead of the anchored yacht, and dropped our anchor there about 150 feet in front of the other yacht. We were all surprised at how well and how quickly the anchor got a hold. I was relieved, because there were alot of things to square away on the boat and we were going to start losing light in a couple more hours. We managed to get the genoa re-furled nice and neat, the main however, still needed help. After discussing with the crew, I decided that we should move the boat now over to French Cay rather than the next morning, because I had a feeling that there was going to be a lot of boat traffic in the harbour we were at.
So, less than an hour after we dropped anchor, we were pulling it back up. The anchor windlass started to strain however, and no more chain was coming in. There was a problem alright. It seemed that the anchor was grabbed on to an old mooring line that was on the bottom of the harbor and it would not let it go. The line got taut with the anchor pulling on it about 10 feet below the surface. We could barely make out that the anchor was hooked on good to this pretty thick mooring line.
So, not-so-happily, I donned a mask and jumped into the murky harbor water to see what I can do. This was a touchy situation, because I knew that if I did manage to free up the anchor that the boat would start moving away from me really quickly, with the wind blowing the way it was, and the currents pushing on the boat.
After assessing the situation, I called up to Lotte to let the anchor chain out a little to loosen it from the rope. I went under to see if I can pop the anchor off of it when she would loosen the chain up. After 2-3 rather exhausting tries, I finally got the anchor freed. As I expected, the boat started immediately moving away from me at a rate that there would be no way that I can swim around to the stern steps to get back on. Remember, that this was a VERY narrow and crowded harbor!
I grabbed on to the anchor chain, which was still bobbing in the water, and called out to Lotte to raise the anchor up asap. In a move that would make Indiana Jones proud, I hung on to the anchor chain and had it pull me up to the deck level of the bow. Once there, I clamored on to the deck with a little help from Lotte, and got back on the boat. I ran aft to the cockpit and got to the wheel and gained control of the boat before Andiamo slammed into anything. Whew!
After that, we motored around the spit over to French Cay Harbour, being careful not to hit any of the many reef heads sticking out of the water on the way to the channel. We got into the channel, not before touching some of the shallower reef of course. It was difficult to find a good place to drop our anchor. It was quite crowded and the wind was absolutely howling, considering that the anchorage was pretty unprotected to the northeast. We did manage to find a fairly decent spot, but had a hard time getting our anchor to hold. After about 3 tries we finally did. After setting the first anchor, we set up the dinghy, and I took the fortress anchor out off the bow and dropped it in by hand. This was going to be our insurance that we would not drag regardless of the conditions.
After that was done, we were so exhausted that we had to just call it a night. We watched some DVD’s of Futurama and crashed early.
Our first couple of days in French Harbour were pretty uneventful. We did manage to find the French Harbour Yacht Club, and had lunch there. We also found an excellent (but expensive) supermarket just down the road from the yacht club. The girls needed some cash, so they took a cab to head to a bank.
On the 2nd afternoon that we were there, we saw some unusual activity over at the yacht club bar. There were soldiers all over the place, and employees were moving stuff around. It looked like some kind of high-profile special event was happening. Turned out that there was going to be some kind of soiree that evening for the PRESIDENT OF HONDURAS, who was going to be attending. We were also told that the yacht club was going to be off limits that night to all but invited guests only. All we could think of was that we had to do everything we could to try to get a picture of us with the president. I mean, when do you ever get a chance like that??
So over dinner, we plotted strategy and tried to figure out how we can get into this clambake for our much-coveted photo. Lotte and Pauline were leaning on the angle of getting all dressed and tarted up and just walking in like they were invited (they can be very persuasive, I’ve seen them in action). I would get in as their “bodyguard”. After careful strategizing, planning and analyzing methods of execution, we had a few beers. After that, we were all just a bit too lazy to initiate our plan, and thought it would be better to take a nap instead. We ended up sleeping through the whole shabang. Needless to say, our well-thought-out plan to get a photo with Prez of Honduras failed to materialize in any real way. It would have been cool though.
We started focusing our attention on where we would go next on Roatan, figuring that it would be much easier to accomplish that, and no dressing up would be involved.