Guanaja, Honduras

Land Ho!

It’s Wednesday, Oct. 30, and, after four nights and four days of sailing (with very little motoring), Peter and I arrived at Guanaja, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras. The trip was mostly uneventful, although Peter thought another boat was tailing us the first night. We maneuvered away. Our route was circuitous and about twice as long as it would have been if we had stayed near the coast. For cruisers, the idea is to be far enough away from shore to make it not worth the expense of gasoline (which is high) for pirates to find and attack us. Like almost every other pleasure boat in this area of the Caribbean, we “went dark.”  We used our radar only to track squalls, and we set our AIS (Automatic Identification System) to receive only. We did not use the tri-color navitation light on the top of our 65-foot mast, preferring to use lights on deck, to minimize the chance that we would be spotted visually at night from far away. We stashed our personal computers and our GoogleFi phone down below and hoped that, should we be boarded, the pirates, who are really just desperate, poor fishermen trying to survive, would not find our hiding places. We were lucky; perhaps our enormous pirate flag deterred them.

Yesterday, another warbler chose to come on board, but he only stayed for a short period of time. Meanwhile, we were delighted with brown boobies in the air around us during the day. They look very handsome in flight with torpedo-shaped bodies, stark white on the bottom, which is what is seen when they are flying and a wide ebony collar accentuating the white head and yellowish white beak. Their long brown-black wings are streaked with wide stripes of white on the underside. They soar and glide, dip and dive into the water searching for fish but also appearing to have great fun.

Warbler stopping for a visit

Two nights ago, the sky was clear of clouds and the Milky Way looked like pulled vanilla taffy with white candy speckles, stretched from one horizon to the other side. It was a new moon, so lunar light did not interfer with the spectacle of galaxies far away.  As the sun set last night, the stars filled the dome of the sky again, but soon clouds billowed out over the water from the far-away mainland, bringing squalls. We were unable to avoid them as they paraded across our path, carrying torrential rain and high winds, with gusts up to 30 mph. The autopilot was overwhelmed, so Peter had to manhandle the wheel while being drenched with driving rain in order to keep us on course. The first time, we had no reefs in, but we discussed putting a reef or two in the mainsail  after the first squall. It was a short discussion because we remembered the sailor’s axiom: If you are thinking you might need to put in a reef, then you need to put in a reef!

There was still rain in various directions in the morning, but we avoided them. A perk was three different rainbows over a period of an hour this morning.

Rainbow over a storm cloud

After showering, getting the boat tidied up (when we discovered a dead six inch squid are the foredeck) and eating lunch, Peter and I launched the dinghy from the foredeck and headed to the main town on Bonacca Cay to visit the customs and immigration offices and check in with the port captain. 

Poor squid could not find a way back into the sea

A friendly man greeted us at the dinghy dock and offered to show us where to find everything. We had read about clearing in online, so we would have been fine on our own, but these types of “guides” that can be encountered throughout the world, stick to you like leeches. We assumed that we would either pay or tip him for his services, but he didn’t want to discuss it up front. It was only when we were heading back to the dinghy dock that he told us his fee is $50 US! Peter is almost always easy-going, but he was quite upset and frustrated. He told Mario that we should have been told the price at the dock and not on the way back to the dock. Peter also explained that such a price was well beyond minimum wage in the US; he was with us for less than an hour. We did pay him but not nearly as much as he asked.

Bonacca Cay, which is about one acre in size, is home to about 10,000 people, almost the entire population of Guanaja, but it didn’t really seem crowded. What impressed us was how clean and relatively well-maintained the city is. The sidewalks are nicely paved. (There are no cars.) Houses and shops are painted in bright colors; inside, they are furnished with just the basics, but they are attactive and tidy. There is no litter on the street or tossed up on the shoreline. There were a lot of stores, and the place seemed vibrant. This was a welcome change from similar places we visited in Panamá.

Bonacca Cay from our boat

And now it is time for bed. While I slept for longer periods of time than Peter over the last four days, I am still sleep-deprived.