We Are All Quacked Up

We arrived in the entrance to French Harbour, a beautiful downwind sail from Port Royal, all of 10 miles, Jami, our friend who owns a live aboard dive boat, came out in his dinghy to greet us and welcome us back. After tieing up to a mooring and putting the boat back together after our long sail and yes, we did the 10 miles all in one day. And even got the forecast. We went off to town with Jami for lunch and some shopping for the pot luck dinner the following night.

So what do a bunch of cruisers do when they get together?:

• Pot luck dinner on Saturday.
• Sunday it was the race of the century! OK, for the day, yes, it was a rubber ducky race. Complete with racing stats and pre track viewing. Well, Pumpkin Duck and Huey Duck got off to a slow start. It didn't help that they spent most of the race upside down. But somewhere along the line they decided to stop looking at the bottom of the sea and poked their beaks up to the sky and started to float on strongly and placed a respectable 7th and 10th. Karen's duck, Dockwise, a mother with 3 babies was busy trying to find her lost chick under the sea, never righted herself and came in 47th of 48! (Even 5200 can't hold a wandering duckling forever!) After the award ceremonies the ducks where put back in their PADDUCK and the celebration continued. Next time we will study the race stats and course conditions more closely!
• Well it is almost time for us to go off for dinner with the gang at a local restaurant, slow roasted brisket and all the fixings, yum.

Then we are heading back to Belize, the south end this time, a 150 mile downwind sail.

Then we will be in the Rio Dulce in Guatemala for the hurricane season.

Itchy and Scratchy

Guanaja, another of the Honduras Bay Islands. It is known for it’s no see ‘ims or sand fleas. And it is justifiably known for them! OK, so we are in the Caribbean and we should not be complaining. …but the itch! Bleach, rubbing alcohol and anti itch cream are our new found friends.
We picked up a mooring ball off of “Graham’s Place”, a small resort on a cay off of Guanaja. We went ashore to “Graham‘s Place’ and wondered around and then we watched a local fisherman come in from a catch and clean a large grouper, so we decided to ask the chef at Graham’s Place ….“what’s for dinner” ??? You guessed it Grouper, so we just had to come back in for dinner and we had a lovely Tequila Grouper. Wow was that good. Graham’s Place caters to sport fish man but we guess they also in to the shoe business.
The wind died completely for a few days, so yes we are complaining….. it was hot. Around 35-36 degrees Celsius each day (around 100 degrees F) so we finally blew up “Dolly”, the 7 foot dolphin and Oscar, the 3 foot Orca and played with them in the water. The only way to get cool! The real trick was to get onto Dolly in the water, easy using the boat ladder, but a real trick otherwise. Our faces were hurting from laughing so hard at each other trying to ride this child’s toy!
We took a water taxi to the closest village, Savannah Bight and walked over to Mangrove Bight, a long 2 miles of course at high noon. We walked on a beautiful road put in after Hurricane Mitch. An interesting use of money. Anyway it was great to see some of the island as we had not been walking that much.
There is Cay called Bonnoco where most people live that are from Guanaja as the main island has so many sand fleas. The Cay is suppose to have as dense a population as Hong Kong. So we took the provision boat from Graham’s Place over for a look see. There is not a square inch left to build on and there are no cars just one main alley and channels that run thru the little Cay. The houses were very well kept and the people friendly, I guess they have to be friendly when you neighbour is arms length away from you. Thursday the boat from the mainland comes in with provisions, so it is busy. We filled out boat back up with fruit and vegetables.
Friday we ran away from the no'seems and back to Port Royal in Roatan, as we are suppose to get a really blow for the next 3 days and we ran out of Deep Woods Off. We actually got to sail the whole way back! Yes and Cheryl even made Karen hand steer for change and not use the Auto Helm (which we call Otto VanHelm).That was a treat. We picked up a mooring ball here and before we finished putting the boat away “Patrice” the owner of Mango Creek came out to say ‘hello’ again’.
The next day, Patrice and Terry went snorkeling with us in their dinghy, the one with the 100 HP Yamaha! The seas would have been too high to go with ’Trouble” our dingy.Just for fun yesterday we did the front half of the stainless steel, yes part of a day in the life of a cruiser! Then we learned how to play Mexican train dominoes, and Karen won!! Today we started with taking the head apart as the weeds had clogged it. Now we are doing internet, in style and our laundry. Well it is almost time for our snorkel. Then we are heading back to French Harbour Roatan to checkout and then off to the south end of Belize a 120 mile sail…hopefully not against the wind, until July 13th. Then off to the Rio Dulce in Guatemala to spend the hurricane season.

Not the weather forecast again

When we left La Ceiba we had light winds and 1 foot seas for our 19 mile motor/sail to Cochinos. Karen was at the helm for the first part and she did get the forecast, then Cheryl took the helm and the wind picked up as well as the seas and of course the wind was hard on the nose (not the forecast…of course). So for the last 2 hours Cheryl did a combination of sailing in the wrong direction and finally motored in the right direction. Cheryl said “it would have been a great sail if we where heading to Roatan not Cochinos”. But we made it and of course we had to laugh because when we left to go to La Ceiba the wind was on our nose and when we came back it was on our nose….how does that happen?????

Interlude inherited a remora a shark sucker, we named Felix ll. But Felix was looking for a better home, when Karen went for a swim Felix ll decided to try Karen’s leg as a new place of residency. Not a good thing, with the appropriate amount of screaming and new found speed Karen climbed into Trouble, our dinghy. Neither Cheryl nor Karen went for a swim until French Harbour. Yup we are chickens. Thank goodness for the deck shower!

We spent a great 2 weeks in Cochinos with our new friends Greg and Judy who own a house there, enjoying great dinners together and playing with the fishies. Greg and Judy left to go home to the states and we were running out of food so off we went back to French Harbour, Roatan. Guess what, the wind was on the nose again. O’ well at least the winds and sea were calm this time.

We arrived back in French Harbour at 11:30 a.m. N’ Joy Boat 3 came over to say ‘hello’ as we had not seen them since Bonaire. They told us of a pot luck barbeque that afternoon for yachties, so we hurried into the food store with them. Once back on the boat we just had enough time to make the dish to share and put our stuff together when N’ Joy Boat 3 picked us up for the barbeque. French Harbour had a whole new group of yachties to meet and it was great to hear all their stories of their travels.

French Harbour, Fantasy Island Marina has a new dock master who has been organizing Pot lucks, Pizza nights and even a Sushi night thrown in for a change for the yachties.

We met up again with Jami a guy who owns a Live aboard dive boat and we did some diving with him and got to have a look around his boat and see what it would be like to be on a live aboard dive boat. It definitely is a lot bigger then Interlude.

We moved down island, okay it is really east ….to a bay called Port Royal where the Spanish and Pirates used to hang out. They even named a beer after the bay…it is not bad beer even Karen liked it..Surprise. N’Joy Boat 3, Wendy and Ken followed us to Port Royal to join in on Karen’s birthday celebration or is it an anniversary…we are not sure what you call it when you get THAT old! Along with Ken and Wendy the couple who run the small fishing/dive/nature resort (Mango Creek) joined us in the celebration complete with sparklers and cake. We even got to play and feed two 2 month old parrots and their dog Sailor…you guessed it the couple who run the resort are ex-yachties.

With N’Joy Boat we took their dingy with there 15 hp engine and went on a tour through a mangrove river to the north side of Roatan, we felt like we were the first explorers beating a path through the wilds of Roatan, except for the ‘private property, keep off signs’. We had hoped to see some crocodiles but the only crocs we saw were the ones on our feet.

We are starting to grow gills as we have been spending time snorkeling with Patrice from Mango Creek exploring the reefs around Port Royal, no sunken treasure yet.
Once again we are all alone in the anchorage ready to head off to Guanaja another Bay Island to the East and off course the wind will be on our nose. We hear the no-see’ms on the main island can carry you away, that is why everyone lives on the cays so if you see us fly by you, you know it is true.