04/27/2012, Graham's Cay, Guanaja, Honduras, CA
Thursday, April 26. This morning we brought our laundry in and were pleased to find that Mr. Graham had spoken to his worker and she was expecting us. She said it would be ready “mas tarde” which I interpreted to mean “this afternoon.” We walked around the cay. There was a combination of guest houses and single cabanas fronting a powder soft white sand beach that I am told they “harvested” from the white sand that stretches out in to the water. It did sort of feel like parrot fish poop. After the beach, there was a nice sand trail that wandered among many different kinds of palms to the outer side of the island. There we found a literal “board walk” two 2x12 planks wide and extending maybe 100' to the drying reef. Neither of us had shoes so we couldn't walk on the reef now, but vowed to come back. I want to see if there is any good snorkeling on the outside. Back at the boat, I left Deb to do her craft things and I took dink to explore. Hurricane Mitch devastated this area only 5-6 years ago and although much has been rebuilt, ruins are everywhere. To the West of Graham's Cay is a little flat sand island with a few scrub pine as its only inhabitants. It has cement around three sides to prevent it from washing away and there are signs of old foundations in the interior. It looks like work is in progress on a fourth cement wall to totally enclose the island, but although there is a cement mixer sitting there, none of the cement looks less than a year old, so who knows? I was able to tie dink to a post on the outer wall and walk out to the reef edge. As usual, it was a jumble of old dead coral piled up by surf on top of marl. I could see some nice looking coral in what was probably 15' of water out beyond the breakers, but getting there even with just snorkel gear would be difficult. I walked back to dink and puttered around the rest of the cay. We invited both Silver Sea and Albatross to come to our boat for happy hour so we decided that we should eat lunch on Graham's and drop a few more limpira since we were getting laundry essentially for free. We shared orders of chicken wings and conch fritters, both of which were good, though the wings had no hot sauce on them (they did have bottles of hot sauce on the side). This time we had brought shoes and so walked out to the reef edge and along the reef. Again, broken coral over marl, but this time with lots of flotsam. There was one piece of blue, probably polypropylene, hawser that must have been 4” in diameter. Wonder what that came off? No real treasures, just lots of plastic! It still amazes me how much plastic gets washed up on the shores of every island. You just cannot get rid of the stuff. As we were walking back, the laundry maid said she was hanging our clothes out to dry and they would be ready “mas tarde.” We were hot from our walk and so returned to the boat for a swim. Just as we were getting out, a squall hit. Half the sky was black and half was still clear blue sky with puffy white clouds. It was raining much harder on the port side of the boat than the starboard! Amazing demarcation. It lasted only briefly, but it cooled things off and gave us a fresh water rinse after our swim. By 4:00 I went in to retrieve our laundry and the maid seemed very pleased with the 200L that I gave her. What a deal – two loads washed, sun dried, and folded for slightly less than $10.00US. At 5:00 George & Pixie, Kevin & Lisa and their two boys came over for sundowners. We plugged the boys in to James Bond “Dr. No” on the surround sound TV and they were in heaven while the adults had a good time eating, drinking, and chatting in the cockpit. It was 8:30 by the time everyone left. We tried making phone calls on Skype. We couldn't get Shary although she said she would turn her computer on for Skype, but then learned from David – who was in bed but not yet asleep – that we are TWO hours behind EDT, not one. I had forgotten about daylight savings time. Oh well, no more calls tonight – sorry Dave.
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04/26/2012, Guanaja, Honduras, CA
Wednesday, April 25. We had decided to leave El Bight today in search of better snorkeling. It looked like the Eastern end of Savannah Bay might provided both a protected anchorage and good snorkeling/diving. But Graham's Cay also seemed intriguing. According to the guide book (now 5 years old), Graham Cay offered free moorings, free water, free ice, and even free laundry to cruisers. Wow! As we were discussing leaving, George on Silver Sea mentioned that he had inquired about Graham Cay and was told that all of the above was still true, so we decided to stop there. We didn't need water or ice as we make both, but laundry would be nice. So at nearly the same time, Silver Sea, Albatross, and Always left El Bight en route to Graham's Cay. Out boat is easly the fastest and we were there first, but could not find mooring balls. I double checked the lat/lon, tried hailing them (the book says they monitor 06, but I tried 06, 16, &72 to no avail.) We started in a nice sandy channel that led around behind the island, but it shoaled quickly to 7' and we backed out. We anchored in 13' over sand just outside the channel. The others arrived and did likewise. I took the dinghy to shore and inquired about the situation. Well, the mooring balls are gone (too expensive to maintain), the water & ice are still free, but no more free laundry. It seems a lady from El Bight was collecting laundry from cruisers there, bringing it here to do and then taking it back and charging them. They did, however, have a bar & restaurant. I asked about anchoring and was told that where we were was OK, but it was better in front of the island. “There's 15-16' and nothing but sand and grass, not rocks.” Well Deb liked the idea of being over shining white sand (we were over grass) so we picked up anchor and moved. “Fifteen to sixteen feet” turned out to be 5-6' and it looked like high tide. We even saw 4.4' at one point (we ground out @ 4.2). After cursing about for a while, we returned to our former spot, but anchored a bit further forward as that when we dropped back, we were indeed over bright white sand – 26' over it, much more comfortable. We had barely finished anchoring when we were visited by a dolphin. He came right up to the boat and looked at us. Then he swam in circles that were the length of the boat and never more than 20' away. On the inside pass, he nearly touched the boat. I got on snorkel gear and went in the water waiting for his next circle. He came within 10' of me and just sort of hung their like I was – vertical in the water, head up. Neither of us approached the other and eventually he swam off to make another circle. He stayed with us doing this for 2+ hours! I took over 150 pics (I'll post some, not all). I turned on some Jimmy Buffet and he seemed to like that, coming even closer on his pass by the hull. Once or twice I thought he was going to stick his head out of the water and talk to us, but he never did. I have several pics of his snout just below the surface. Finally we abandoned the dolphin (he was still circling) and got cleaned up to go in for happy hour. At Graham's Place, we discovered that he had many pens full of various fauna – macaw, parrots, toucan, cayman, sea turtles, lobster & conch, permit, bonefish, tarpon, and a huge Jew fish among others. He also had beautiful sandy beaches with beach chairs and palapas. Quite a place. We had a few drinks and then decided to stay for dinner. Deb had steak (she is just not an island girl when it comes to eating, but her steak was great) and I had a delicious tequila grouper. We talked to Mr. Graham a while and he said that if we brought in laundry tomorrow, he would have one of his “girls” do it if we paid her a little something. Sound like a deal to me. When we returned to the boat, the dolphin was finally gone, but I bet he will be back tomorrow. Note: Deb made several calls to family and in the middle of talking to Luke, the phone died. It seems we did not get the rate we thought and now we have 0 minutes. I am hoping we can recharge it at Graham's Place, but I will have to see tomorrow, so don't hold your breath waiting for us to call.
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04/25/2012, Guanaja, Honduras, CA
Tuesday, April 24. Today is supposed to be the last day of the Norther and, indeed, winds have calmed down a lot. Salida left for Roatan today to catch friends before they leave for the US. They were motoring. We still get fairly brief blasts of wind, like a squall without rain, but overall it is much calmer. As a result, I felt comfortable taking the dinghy out and going snorkeling for the first time. Yesterday I might have ended up on mainland Honduras! I went to the little patch of coral off the point that we had almost had too close an encounter with earlier. It was marked by 4” PVC posts driven in to the ground and probably filled with cement on the bottom. They made a grat place to tie the dinghy. The whole area was shallow, 0-8' , but there was a sort of canyon between two ridges of breaking coral and the middle was real neat. Inside, the coral was very healthy with beautiful purple fans and tube coral that we have not seen much of. There was the usual assortment of fish, even some juvenile queen angels. After exploring that patch, I took dink down a ways and tied to another post and snorkeled another nice patch. It had several dinner sized yellow tail snapper and a couple too small lobsters. The afternoon turned cloudy and windy again so we just hung out on the boat. I read and Deb did her crafting. I'm going to get painting some more, but if I can snorkel..... I guess I should have been born an Aquarius. The next couple days are supposed to be calm and then the return to Easterly trades. We plan to work out way anti-clockwise around the island finding spots to anchor and either snorkel or hookah before heading to Roatan. For most of the northern and western shore, we can get between the shore and the reef and be very protected with the diving right at hand.
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04/24/2012
I just posted more pics to the Isla Providencia, Sailboat Races, and Bay Islands of Honduras albums (all sub albums of Our 2012 Cruise to Honduras).
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04/24/2012, Guanaja, Honduras, CA
Monday, April 23. Day 39. This morning we returned to town to try to get internet set up. George of Silver Sea came with us as he had a stick set up Saturday and it quit working Sunday. We all took in bags of garbage to dispose of. It seems there is a "garbage boat" and you can just throw your garbage on board. It gets hauled away and disposed of periodically. Now I'm thinking, if we find the WRONG boat and throw our garbage in and then the next cruiser does the same and the next... Well it probably wouldn't be very funny for the boat owner, but the scenario got me chuckling. As it turned out,just before we got to town another cruiser in a tender (too big to call a dinghy) came by. George held up the bag of garbage and the cruiser pointed. We followed him to the correct boat and disposed of the garbage. As we pulled up to Zapata, it was a mob scene. Big cayugas going every which way. I found a small opening just big enough to nose into and tie up. The cayuga in front of me must had had several 1000 oranges and nearly as many bananas that the girl was selling from the boat. I bought 20 oranges for 1L each. Then we went to the store where George bought his stick and met another couple there who said the owner was a computer guru and make anything work. The store, however, was extremely busy and he was constantly being pulled away to do this or that. It was going to take a while. Fortunately I asked if he had a stick to sell and he said, "No". That made my choice easy as I went down to Miss Angie's. The store was open, it was empty, and she had a stick. Bingo. I also noticed a sign on the wall that advertised "International calls to US, 60 min. for 30L." That works out to about $0.03/min. So I got a SIM card for the phone as well. While Miss Angie was setting everything up, I plugged in the stick to be sure it worked. (Other cruisers had recommended this as sometimes things were not set up right and if you had your computer with you, they could fix it then saving you another trip to town.) After it installed all the software, it said "you must register SIM card first." Ah-ha. Glad I brought the computer (in a dry bag, of course). No, it was just that I inserted the SIM card upside down. Second try, the software comes up, I click "Connect", it dials, and redials, and redials....Just then Craig & Liz walk in saying that the signal is down and so they couldn't get there stick set up. Well, that explains why mine doesn't work, but I still don't know if it is OK - probably because it was dialing, but.. The bill is more than I expected. Apparently a few weeks ago they had a promo where you got the stick and 1 month of internet for 500L. Not now. Stick, 850L with 1 week free. One month, 500L, but she can't add that now as the signal is down. Oh well, we do a little grocery shopping. I find some Haas avocados, grapefruit, and really good looking green beans. George checked his phone (which did work) - still no signal. So we found a bar and had a beer (it was nearly noon - in fact, the worry was that we would not get a signal back before noon because everything closes down from noon to 2:00. We did and we went back to the store and got everything set up correctly. Back at the boat, I fired up the internet and Deb started calling US. Then I read the message that said the plan didn't start until after midnight. Now it isn't clear if all calls must be made after midnight to get the low rate or just that the plan doesn't start until midnight tonight. We will hope for the latter. I downloaded more books for my Kindle. I now have 76 Dr. Who books, 68 Star Wars (from various authors??), and 30 Star Trek, in addition to the 12 Douglas Adams, 15 Isaac Asimov, 7 Kurt Vonnegut, and 7 Arthur c. Clark, well you get the idea. I have plenty to read. Word got passed around the anchorage that everyone was going in for pizza tonight. It seems that Manati, the local German restaurant, is closed Monday, so another German ex-pat opens his place for wood oven pizza only on Mondays. It was reported to be buggy, however, so we brought the Thermacell. It worked and we were the most popular table at the place. (Picnic table outside in the sand.) The beer was cold and the pizza was good. (You just ordered "pizza" it only came one way and that was more or less "loaded".) We had a great time chatting with other cruisers we had not met yet. Kurt on Catalyte who now lives in Rio Dulce, had run a sailing school in Placencia, Belize, and had chartered Always one time. He is headed for Bocas and may end up leaving his boat in the little marina next to our house. It never ceases to amaze me what a small world this is.
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