Sylvia Crain - Hoy! - Page 5 of 250

January 4, 2025

We’ve been in Roatan for several weeks now and enjoyed both Christmas and New Years here. We have traveled for many Christmas and New Years celebrations, both before and since having the boat; Mexico multiple times, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, Rwanda, Cambodia and Spain. This has perhaps been the lowest key and least Christmassy and New Years of all of them. Not completely sure why.

Christmas

We spent Christmas at anchor in a fairly isolated spot in Port Royal in the eastern part of Roatan. Our friends Mark and Christine on Gray Matter were anchored with us and we had Christmas Eve cocktails and I made a nice meal on Christmas Day. It just felt very low key.

Making pumpkin tarts in paradise while listening to Christmas music.

Christmas dinner. Cornish game hens for 3 and Miso Salmon for Christine. Salad, wild rice stuffing and fresh dinner rolls. A nice meal.

I played Christmas music for days before, we watched Christmas movies and even made farilitos to being in some of the New Mexico Christmas feeling.

This is the first time we’ve managed to make the farilitos work. We collected sand from the beach and used LED candles we bought in Antigua. Lunch sacks from the local grocery. Every other time we’ve tried it was very stormy; although right after we got this picture it started pouring rain.

Perhaps not having all the Christmas jingles and not having stores with “Christmas cheer” kept the spirit away. Who knows. It was an odd Christmas for us though.

New Years

We moved back to French Harbour for New Years and Christine and Mark headed for Guanaja for kite surfing and more diving. The Roatan Yacht Club is a very small marina with 4 or 5 occupied boats. The restaurant at the marina had a New Years dinner so we decided to go. The places where we knew there would be more New Years activity were 30 – 40 minutes away by car. We were not excited about driving back in the dark after midnight so opted for the local dinner. On New Years Eve, the other boaters told us they were having a small get together at 5:30 at the dive center dock. Ok, we’re in!

We headed up to dinner, fairly sure it would not be well attended. In other locales, we’ve been in big crowds with music, celebration and party favors. This night, we were the only ones there, the waitress did not KNOW there was a special dinner and general rock/island/rap music is playing. We had to instruct her. Waldorf salad, a filet with pepper sauce and coconut flan with a glass of house wine.

Out comes the Waldorf. It looks odd and way over dressed. We discuss what is in it. This Waldorf is potato, pineapple, bell pepper, nuts, mayo and sweetened condensed milk! For those of you who may not know a Waldorf, it is a simple salad of apples, celery, walnuts and mayo and maybe grapes. And very lightly dressed just to mix the hold the ingredients together. Jim could hardly touch it but I did manage to eat most of the pineapple and some potatoes.

The rest of the meal was better; the steak was not bad and came with flavored rice, pan fried potatoes and a small green salad. We got through most of that and took the flan for later as we were over full after the appies at the dock party and then the meal.

You my have heard of sailors midnight (8 PM) and we expected everyone to be gone from the dock, but they were breaking the rules. So we joined them again and we all made it until nearly 11 PM. A fun group of folks some with lots of experience, others newer to the whole long distance cruising life. I think everyone there was part time on their boat which is a bit unusual. I guess the real sailors were all on their boats at anchor.

The after party was rather lively! Alexandra (Germany), Jim, Me! Connie (Fort Pierce FL), Linda and Ken (Victoria BC) and Steve(Ft Pierce). John (Alberta – with Alexandra) was taking the picture. Scott and Connie have 20 years or more of sailing experience and had some good thoughts on our travels to come. All of us are part time boaters.

So what about Roatan?

We have split our time between boat chores and exploring. No more big tasks, smaller ones such as installing the new dinghy solar, the shunt for the Cerbo GX to allow us to better monitor our battery usage/charge, re-installing stereo speakers, etc. But we have played a bit. Much more like just being home (I guess we are!)

We have rented cars several times to explore farther than we could on foot. Roatan is rather hilly with a single road running down the spine of the island with offshoots to towns mostly on the shore. There are two municipalities on Roatan island; Roatan to the west which is dominated by the cruise lines and has decent roads and Santos Guardiola to the east which is more remote, less developed and as you can guess now has a paved road with LOTS of big potholes.

I bet you can tell this is towards the eastern part of the island.

Port Royal

We went snorkeling several times. It turns out the Bay Islands are part of the Meso-American Reef which runs from Cancun in Mexico all the way to Honduras. We’d though it ended at the bottom of Belize, but no, it continues to the eastern edge of Honduras. Roatan is surrounded by the reef, close to shore so it is easy to snorkel inside or out. The southern shore is protected from the prevailing northeast winds so one can easily (and safely for us amateur snorkelers) snorkel outside where the coral wall quickly drops off to 100’s of feet.

Jim in island garb as we pick a snorkel spot outside the reef which you can just see if you look for the black line to the right of the picture. A very smooth day out there!

There is also a fun mangrove path that takes you to the north shore of the island by boat. We enjoyed that little dinghy trip.

A very nice path through the mangroves, most of which has plenty of depth (5 – 10 feet). We didn’t see much bird life, but we also did not go slow to try and find it. It WAS there I’m sure.

We’ve reached the north shore of Roatan from the south shore. Apparently there are several resorts that we could reach if we continued on. The path is a bit harder to follow here and it was getting late. We made it back to Rincon just before dark. There are lots of paths inside the reef such that you can circumnavigate the island in a lancha for much of the way. This inside the reef path is the original road of Roatan before the dirt and paved roads.

Exploring Roatan

Roatan is a premier diving and snorkeling spot. It is also “owned” by the cruise ships. It is not uncommon for 2 or 3 ships with 4 – 6000 people to disembark daily. They are farther west on the island from us and there is hardly any town where the ships berth. Small vans collect people and whisk them away to diving, catamaran day trips, snorkeling, zip lining, botanical gardens or beach tours for 3 or 4 hours before they return to the boat to leave for their next port. Thus, what infrastructure exists on the island is geared to the tourist boats. Want to visit a botanical garden? Sign up for a 2 hour tour of the garden. Forget just visiting and wandering on your own.

Thus, it is hard to find places to wander. But we are slowly finding it.

Heading West

We first went to West Bay, at the western tip of Roatan before going to West End (I know, confusing). It is very steep on the south shore with expensive homes and resorts on the north shore which make it difficult to get to the beach. We’ve been told to go to a resort, buy and drink and the beach is yours. But, we headed to West End instead as we were not finding the there there.

West End was perhaps as close to a town with restaurants, shops and an accessible beach that we have found. These boats are all waiting for some cruise ship visitor to go snorkeling or diving. There were several small hotels here and we were there one one of the few days with no cruise ships in port. Yeah! Thus, the folks here were are visiting in another form. We did have a long chat with a guy in a local crafts store (I bought a pair of lion fish spine earrings and a salt box) from Boston who parents are from Roatan and mainland Honduras. He now comes for moths at a time as he finds it much nicer, and he also has a local Roatan finance. We enjoyed West End.

Gingers in West End was a welcoming restaurant with a nice view of the bay where you could just walk into the water for swimming or go around to the left and be on the reef. Nope, we did not have anything with us to do so.

From West End we continued east on the north shore to Sandy Bay. This road is shown on Google maps and yes, it is the “main road” in town. This is how you get to the restaurants and small hotels in Sandy Beach. We stopped for drink in Sandy Beach to enjoy the spot.

Heading East

French Harbour where we are docked is somewhat at the mid-point of the island. Thus, we can explore west or east and have divided that into different days.

We hired a bird guide one morning to explore the birding spots. When not birding, he takes pictures of cruise ship tourists to help them remember their visit. One has to earn a living. He has become quite a good birder and has found several species not knows to have lived on Roatan. A great resource where we also looked at plants and insects and butterflies as well as birds. A wonderful morning.

Using his birding spots as a guide we headed east on another day and visited Milton Bight swamp also on the north side of the island. A good birding spot and a fun spot to get to on this wooden swamp bridge.

We continued east to Punta Gorda, a Garifuna community even farther east on the north shore. I was very surprised to see this mud and stick wall. We saw them on several homes in Punta Gorda. Punta Gorda is a town with a sense of town, although still quite small.

We then crossed to the southern shore of the island to explore Jonesville and Oakridge, towns on either side of Oakridge Bay. Seems Jonesville is the “wealthier” side, and even has a town triangle.

Heading the the eastern edge of the bay is Oakridge which seems much poorer. We encountered several groups of male kids/young men, covered in used motor oil with masks with white faces. They were not threatening but definitely wanted to “get close”. I’ve not found the specific tradition but have found references in Garifuna culture at Christmas or different heritage days and using motor oil, dancing and masking as white Caucasians as a form of resistance.

Oak Harbour is quit a pretty harbour with houses and businesses right along the shore of the bay and on small islands near the mouth. This is taken from the water taxi/dive boat dock.

Brick Bay

Apparently Roatan has quite a large shrimping fleet with some boats in very good shape and others a little more rugged. There are quite a few in French harbour, more in Brick Bay and each harbour along the south coast. The heyday of shrimping was in the 1980’s and apparently is much smaller now than the 200 shrimpers there used to be.

Motorcycles

Our Next Move

We will stay here until at least the 13^th as our friends Harvey and Nadine (whom we met when doing the Down East Loop) are joining us. When they arrive we’ll show them what we’ve found for fun on the island and once we find a decent weather window, the 4 of us will head to San Andres/Providencia, a piece of Colombia off the coast of Nicaragua. This is about a 40 hour journey and having additional crew will make us happier and for am easier trip. This may be the hardest passage we’ve done, certainly the longest and likely in the biggest seas. It is HARD to find weather here that won’t be on the bow or beam and less than 4 foot seas. Not much to our liking. Thus, having folks to share it with and an opportunity to get a break from being in charge is important.

Us with Nadine and Harvey in the Bras d’Or in August of 2022.

It will be great to see Harvey and Nadine again as we have not seen them since we were in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in Late August-Early September 2022.

Preparing the Pirates

Now we very much hope to not meet any real pirates, but the cost of Honduras and Nicaragua are a known “hotspot”. Hotspot = 15 incidents between 2016 and 2024 consisting mostly of being followed by a boat, 2 of which boats were boarded. Both boarding with closer to shore. Those farther off shore 200 miles or so were by larger fishing boats and did not result in any boardings. Additionally, it seems that sail boats are a more common target; is it that there are more of them or just that is is easier to get on a sailboat and they don’t know how many folks may be on the big power yacht. We are more intimidating? But, one needs to be prepared in case as it is a small possibility.

So, what is the plan? It is still in development from watching videos of folks who have experienced pirates and others who have not had the experience, but what they did to prepare. We’ve started to develop a pirate “kit” So far it contains the following:

Our pirate kit in progress. No gun as first, they are illegal in many most countries we’ll be traveling in and can get you into lots of trouble if you don’t declare them. We considered paintball or beanbag guns, but they are not legal to fly on planes with and can be confiscated. Wasp spray with a range of 20 feet is a great deterrent and legal (bear spray is not). We do have a flare gun but tests show they will not penetrate skin nor cause much harm. But as a deterrent a possibility. A flashlight club can work well if they get close. An air horn to call other boats in an anchorage or just to warn folks off. A high powered flashlight to shine in folks eyes and warn them off. Our new little Zoleo. This is an emergency SOS device that works worldwide to call emergency responders, including the Coast Guards of all countries. It then opens a chat with the local authorities so you can communicate with them. If one is far out at sea, it may not help for pirates, but they can send other boats in the area to your help as well.

Additionally, Jim is adding a switch (as I write) so we can turn off our AIS. The smaller pangas and launchas closer to shore would NOT have AIS, but larger fishing boats might. So, if one thinks one is being followed, you go silent by turn off all your running lights if at night and turn off your AIS so you can’t be tracked. You put on all speed and modify your path so harder to track. Some folks think that using your radio to call for help is not good as the bad guys are probably listening. The Zoleo may be better in this instance.

If at anchor, we do have security cameras in the cockpit and can add them on the companionways that alert us to activity and we have solar flood lights on the side of the boat as well. So, lots of options, but one has to sort out scenarios without having a clue what are really the likely options which can be quite variable. There is a Caribbean Threat reporting site where you can see all activity, from someone having a boat or motor stolen to severe acts of piracy.

Of course, we are not expecting pirates so don’t worry about that. We are not really all that worried.

All is good, take a deep breath and relax. Nothing will happen!

The Latest Excitement!

Late afternoon today, the Honduran Coast Guard towed in a sailboat Dulce 3 D, a local boat that had taken friends of the owners out the Cayo Cochinos for a few days. Dulce 3 D was docked across from us. The Coasties had a quite large lancha and Dulce is not tiny. It was quite the maneuvering in, of course the late afternoon pouring rain. Apparently the drive shaft broke on the engine. The sailed until they had the wind on their nose at which point the Coasties brought them in. it was all very slow speed docking and they did not manage to touch us but did the sailboat on the other side of them.