So, it’s my third holiday season since leaving LA and starting this Andiamo thing. And the evolution of how I spend the holidays onboard continues. While some things remain constant from last year, other things change. Sjelle is onboard yet again this holiday as last holiday. We’re in Honduras again, though this time, we managed to make it out of La Ceiba for the actual holiday time.
The weather, while having been great the past week, has become iffy yet again for the holiday weekend, so we had to duck in on the south side of the island to get away from the horrific northerlies that were due to blow through the yesterday night and this morning (and boy did they ever!).
Among the things that changed this time around, the most obvious was the fact that I found myself still recovering from the really scary bus robbery that I went through along with my friends Miguel and Arcelia just a couple of weeks ago. As much as I tried to keep it from doing so, it did cast a pall on my otherwise festive attitude this time of year. While I like to think I’ve mostly recuperated from the ordeal. I still find myself in a funk every once in awhile over it. But I’m sure in time, that will drop off.
Being in Roatan definitely helped my outlook on things. We spent one night in the West End, knowing full well we’d have to leave the very next day (Xmas day) to get to the Southside because of the incoming weather. The weather was great all that day on the 24th, and we managed to even get some nice sailing out of La Ceiba. It also helped that we caught a nice barracuda along the way, which Sjelle cooked up for dinner. Yep, Christmas dinner, Caribbean style…
The next morning, the weather was definitely giving us a sign of things to come, so we decided to leave a little earlier than usual. The wind was blowing pretty light but from the west, so it would make it an easy sail to Jonesville, where we decided we’d go on the south side. By the time we left West End, and went around the point and started heading east, the wind kicked up to over 15 knots. An hour later, it was blowing over 20 knots, with gusts close to 30 knots. All this was fine with us, since we had it behind us.
A few hours later, we’re in Jonesville. As we came into the anchorage, we immediately saw a few of our Rio Dulce compatriots in the anchorage. Aaron and Lila from “Blow me Away”, and Sonny and Kay from “valentina”. We had seen both of them last in West End when we were there with Miguel and Arcelia a little more than a week ago. Aaron and Lila told us about the Christmas dinner at the Hole in the Wall, which is a famous little boater bar here in Jonesville. It was due to start in a little over a half hour from the time they told us, so we’d have to move fast to make it. But we did.
It was a nice group of people, both cruisers and landlubbers. There was a great spread of potluck food (of which we hadn’t time to contribute to, but nobody seemed to care), and turkey, courtesy of Bob, the owner of Hole in the Wall. For the next couple hours, we ate, drank and told fun stories. It was a nice, low-key, yet very satisfying way to spend the holiday. By the time sunset rolled around the chill from the incoming coldfront was felt in the air, and we all retreated to our boats to ride out the incoming nasty weather.
And the weather got nasty indeed. Even though we were on the southside of the island in a protected bay, we still felt some of the front’s wrath. The winds kicked up to well over 25-30 knot gusts for most of the night. The boat swung like crazy on the anchor most of the night, but luckily we never dragged. I had the good luck to find a steep upgrade in the bottom, and managed to get the anchor locked in the hill. The wind generator got a good workout that night, that’s for sure.
So the weather seems to be tapering off, hopefully the front will pass before day’s end, and things will calm down again. Hoping so, because tomorrow, we need to head back to La Ceiba to meet up with Miet and her German pal Imke who are coming for another visit to Andiamo from Guatemala. Hopefully, we’ll get to do some whitewater rafting in Pico Bonito, and then a couple of days’ worth of sailing the islands. Then it’s a matter of figuring out where to spend New Year’s eve.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to figure out a plan for that soon.