Where Shall We Go?

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January 27, 2025

As typical, I am behind in posting. It is extra hard when we have guests and I like to spend time with them and it does not leave time for writing. This post covers from Sunday January 12th to Saturday January 18th. I’ll then post a second entry updating from January 19th on.

Guests

Harvey and Nadine arrived on Sunday and were very happy to escape the cold of Pennsylvania. After they settled in, we did a tour of the island, some snorkeling and completed an overview of the boat features, functions and mechanicals.

We had enjoyed West End and Gingers so much that we returned with Harvey and Nadine on our little Roatan island tour.
Forget waiting for an hour after eating before snorkeling. Walk out of the restaurant, into the water and snorkel around the corner to the reef. Lovely!
Harvey and Nadine learning the details of the engine room. in preparation for travel.
Connie and Steve also at the yacht Club in Roatan had gone diving. Although the reefs are protected, lionfish although pretty are NOT protected as they are invasive from Asia. You can take as many as you want. Only the spines are of concern on these guys. Steve cleaned them, Connie breaded them and cooked them. She gave us an appetizer for our trip. So tasty!

I had enlisted the help of a weather router; we’d used Chris Parker previously in crossing to the Bahamas and from Key West to Isla Mujeras. He is very skilled and knows weather and boats. He contacted me and we had a perfect weather window from Guanaja to Grand Cayman. I’ll come back to that in a moment as Grand Cayman is the opposite direction from Providencia and Panama.

Moving to Guanaja

We had planned to move to Guanaja, the eastern most of the Bay Islands of Honduras, but were hoping to have a bit of time to explore them. They are less developed and have trails and beautiful snorkeling. Alas, we did the 6 hour run from Roatan to Guanaja on Wednesday with the plan to leave Thursday night for Grand Cayman.

Anchored near Grahams Place, a small island on the reef. Gray Matter in the background. They have been here so long they are starting to build a reef community on their hull.

When we arrived in Guanaja, we anchored near Mark and Christine on Gray Matter. They had been here for several weeks, diving and kite surfing. We had a drink with Mark, delivered a dock line mark had left in Roatan and two bottles of coffee creamer. We then needed to prepare food, routes and dockage in Grand Cayman and make sure everyone was ready to travel the next evening. Harvey and Nadine had some driving time on Wednesday so they could get used to the boat.

Checking out of Honduras

The population of Guanaja is somewhere around 8,000 with more than 6,000 of those folks living on a tiny cay of 100 acres called Bonacca. They story is they settled on the cay as opposed to the main island to avoid the flies on calm nights.

Heading to Bonacca and the gas dock to tie up.
The big island of Guanaja with it’s hilly terrain and the trails we did not get to enjoy.

In any case, this is where Immigration and the Port Captain are and where we need to check out of Honduras. We took a 15 minute dinghy ride to the island, tied up at one of the gas docks and headed onto the island to find Immigration and the Port Captain.

There are no cars and very narrow pathways. We had no idea where to find the Port Captain or Immigration, but how hard could it be in 100 acres?
At one point the island was apparently 2 with little bridges between them.
Such interesting trash cans and a bit of left over Christmas decoration.
Wow! A public phone. But, behind a chain link fence. A relic of the past.
We found the port and the Port Captain. He told us to come back after we visited Immigration. The hills in the background are on the big island. Many houses are built out over the water. We had to find Immigration before we could see the Port Captain.
The delivery ship, likely from La Cieba on mainland Honduras. The water was VERY clear. You could see the bottom easily and lots of fish enjoying the water under the ship.
There were not many/any parks so everyone played and enjoyed sitting on the streets. This portion of town was destroyed by a huge fire in October 2021 where 200 homes were burned and more than 400 people displaced. They are slowly rebuilding.
This was the only park we saw, a basketball court in this building.
We managed to find a lovely restaurant for lunch while waiting for Immigration to return. If the owner had not walked us to her place, we’d never have found it, not thought it was an entrance for us to use.
A beautiful view, fresh breeze and good food. The Sea View restaurant.
Finally, Immigration was open. Three chairs, no AC and a very nice official that liked to talk. It took us an hour to get our documents to check out.
A covered, boat in gas station. How fun.
These two little ones made the trip to the gas pump with me. They enjoyed being on the boat. Their family does not have a boat. If they go to Roatan or La Cieba, they take the ferry.

On Our Way to Grand Cayman

Why are we heading the wrong direction? It turns out the total distance from Guanaja to Providencia is nearly the same as from Grand Cayman to Providencia. From Guanaja, one travels about 150 NM due east then turns due south for another 150 NM. From Grand Cayman, it is just at 350 NM due south. The “advantage” of travel from Grand Cayman (or Jamaica) is that the prevailing east – northeast winds are somewhat behind you the whole way as opposed to half the trip on your bow. We’ll see. This is a common path south. Also, it provides a change of scenery for us. If we did not take this window, we’d be stuck in the Bay Islands for 2 – 4 more weeks.

Pulling anchor in Guanaja. This was the first time Harvey and Nadine had done this with us. Jim and I set the anchor when we arrive. We realized this was a piece of training we had not done.

Our trip from Guanaja to Grand Cayman was scheduled for 36 – 40 hours. We pulled anchor at 4:45 pm on Thursday, planning to check into Grand Cayman on Saturday morning.

The Voyage

We navigated out of a narrow but deep cut through the reef and headed east around the tip of Guanaja. Then we navigated a straight line of 306.5 nm estimated to take 1 day and 18 hours to our entry at the port in George Town, Cayman Islands. No, one does not stop. You run the whole time and someone is always at the helm. With Harvey and Nadine we split into pairs, Jim and Nadine and Harvey and I. Three hour shifts for each team and each team member taking an hour and a half at the helm. Thus, one could usually get 4 ½ hours of rest between shifts.

This was our last view of Guanaja as we sail off into the dark. The water was pretty smooth. If it stayed like this the whole trip, we’d be OK.

It quickly got dark. Fairly smooth sailing at this point. The anticipation is always great with so many hours ahead. And even though it was supposed to be calm, after our washing machine passage from Rio Dulce a month ago, Jim and I were a bit apprehensive. This was to be our longest passage to date. We were glad to have crew to help with the trip.

At least on this trip we had a nearly full moon almost the whole night. Yeah! One could see the horizon. We did have to cross the Gulf Stream, only about 1 knot of current here (vs 3 – 4 off of Florida). It was interesting to watch it get rockier as we entered the current. We had a very light wind against the current (only 3 – 8 kts of wind) so it was not bad. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on. At first I though it was the ocean depth and changes from deeper to shallower; all in 3 – 5,000 meters! Getting to the other side of the current proved my point that it was wind and current as the waters calmed again. Solving this also gave me something to do during my 11 – 2 am shift. There is a reason the rule is NEVER cross the Gulf Stream from Florida to the Bahamas if there is ANY north component in the winds. it will get very soupy, and maybe dangerous very quickly with that much current.
The next day we passed Swan island (this is where we would have turned south if we were going directly to Providencia. We never saw the island, but this Brown Booby and his buddies that live on Swan Island flew over to check us out and do some fishing.
The second morning we saw a couple of Humpback whales quite close by. These were the first ocean whales Jim and I had seen. We’d seen them in the St Lawrence, but not the open ocean.
12 NM out from George Town. Jim makes his first call the the Port Captain. We call again at 5 NM out and they give us a waypoint to motor to, and then another where we docked.
Docked for check in. It is always a bit of a dopey time to dock after several days at sea. These rocks did not thrill me, but the water was plenty deep. I was glad a container ship was not on the port side of the dock. That would have made it a bit more nerve wracking. Very nice folks at Immigration and the Port. Then another two hours to our permanent dock.
A little celebration after our voyage. We were happy to be tied up

We completed the trip from Guanaja to Grand Cayman in 1 Day 16 hours (308 nm) at an average speed to 7.7 kn. After checking into the Cayman Islands, we had another 16.6 nm and 2 hours and 16 minutes to round the tip of Grand Cayman and into North Sounds to our dock at the Cayman Island Yacht Club.

You’ll have to wait for my next post to learn about the Cayman Islands and our next plans.

Although our route north to the Cayman Islands was not “prime” pirate territory, these were the only suspected pirates we saw.

Comments

Where Shall We Go? — 2 Comments

  2. You guys are living the dream and the best part is your sharing with the rest of us. Great pictures and I’m back in geography class.