Further South

Location: French Cay Harbour, Roatan, Honduras
Position: 16 21.255 N 086 26.646 W

We had originally planned to slowly work our way down the coasts of Mexico and Belize, then head east to the Bay Islands of Honduras. After talking with other cruisers and studying the prevailing weather patterns we decided that this was not a good plan for us. The wind generally comes from the SE and currents are generally from the south so to coastal hop south is to work against these forces and can be “not very comfortable”.

Of additional concern is the reputation Belize has been gaining among cruisers lately. Much of the scuttlebutt these days consists of “The fees to clear in are arbitrary and the officials are surly and looking for bribes – they’re all a bunch of crooks.” and “Everything there is expensive – the beers are $5 each and it’s lousy beer.” and “The outer atolls are beautiful – well worth a visit, but don’t bother checking in – it’s not worth the hassle.” True or not, these stories had an effect on our decision to avoid Belize and we know several others who have decided likewise. Let’s hope for Belize’s sake they clean up their act – otherwise more cruisers will decide to bypass it for other, more friendly and predictable destinations.

At any rate, although we weren’t very thrilled about making another three day passage we decided to wait for a front to pass through and ride the northerly wind SE across the current in the Yucatan Channel. Once past the Yucatan Current, we’d be out of the confused “wind against current” seas and start heading directly south to the Bay Islands of Honduras. A 320 mile passage at our 5 knot planning speed the trip should take around 74 hours or just over three days.

We set off in the morning from Isla Mujeres with our buddy boat “Diva” – we’ve travelled with Carl & Debbie off and on for a few years now and have found that our personalities, our relatively cautious approach to weather and routing decisions, and our boat speeds are very compatible.

The first day we encountered several rain showers making it a wet day in Rachel’s cockpit (Mark: “Can we get a full enclosure now?”). Using the radar we were able to avoid several more squalls that day and night and by the 2nd day we had sunny skies and more comfortable seas.

One of Rachel’s most valuable pieces of equipment, especially on a long passage, is her autopilot (which we’ve named “Otto” – pretty original, huh?). Even an hour spent hand steering the boat in ocean waves can get tiring over a long period of time, preventing us from taking the longer 3-4 hour off-watch rest periods we prefer.

Unfortunately during the 2nd night Diva’s autopilot developed a problem, requiring them to hand steer for the next 36 hours. Diva has a tiller instead of a steering wheel, so they were able to hook up some bungee cords to the tiller to help hold her on course and make steering easier. At this point Rachel took the lead so Diva could use our masthead light as a beacon to steer to. Between the bungee cords, Rachel’s dancing masthead light, and hour on – hour off watches they made it the rest of the way to Roatan without any additional problems. We all arrived safely at French Cay Harbour at about 10 am Wednesday after 3 days and 3 hours. All in all, it was a good trip and we’re happy to finally be here.