Friday, May 11. Deb was up most of the night with diarrhea (not sure why, I didn't get it) and as a result, spent most of the day napping to catch up on lost sleep. That was good as it enabled her to recover to the point where she could enjoy going in “on the town” tonight. Unfortunately, that meant I did not have a dive partner. I called Salida and asked if they wanted to dive. Liz said, no, she would snorkeler; but Craig said yes. I got the hookah all set and loaded in the dink, picked up Craig, and motored out to one of the balls inside the reef. I was not sure how much the wind would pull on the hookah (it was blowing ~15 kts.) so i figured we would start with a shallower dive inside the reef and see how it went. I launched the hookah, we both got ready, I pulled it back and started it up. And it made terrible noises, so I shut it down immediately. I visually checked everything and all seemed in order, so I started it again. Same bad noises and this time little ball bearings appeared in the pan under the motor/compressor. Not good. We aborted the dive, brought the hookah back to the boat for an autopsy. It seems that the ball bearing race on the piston of the compressor exploded sending scraps of metal and ball bearings everywhere. The only reason I can think of is that I must have put to big a shot of water into the intake when cleaning it last time. (It is really weird, but part of the post dive instructions call for pouring a thimble full of water directly down the air intake 3-5 times) The thimble is attached to the intake dust cover (which is much larger) so I must have got some water in the cover and accidentally dumped that in too. Water in a cylinder can really create havoc as it is, of course, non-compressible. I remember bending a rod on the vette's engine once when water got into a cylinder over the winter. Tremendous forces at work there. In any event, the hookah was dead. Although the makers of the compressor have service depots all over the US, they do not have any in Roatan. I called Airline (the company I bought it from) via Skype and they said they could ship the parts I needed on Monday, arrive Miami Tuesday, arrive La Ceiba Friday or Saturday via Rapido Cargo, and I should have it by Sunday. So, about a week of down time with no diving unless I go with one of the dive companies on shore. We can still do some snorkeling, but the thing here is diving, deep diving. So now the question becomes, do we wait here for a week or do we spend part of that time sailing to Utila after the wind calms down? (The ferry will deliver to either place.) We'll see how the snorkeling is and how the weather goes. This afternoon I did go snorkeling with Craig & Liz on a little patch of reef just behind our boats. The coral was mostly covered by junk, but there were lots of fish and even some lobster (another marine park, cannot take anything). When we got back to our boat, Craig discovered that the mooring line from the shackle to the screw had broken and the only thing still holding the boat was his safety line. I came over and maneuvered the boat while he was in the water tying the line back together as Liz stood on the bow and directed things. It worked smoothly but was rather frightening that it happened. On return, I dove on mine again. It really looked OK, all ~1” polypropylene with metal thimbles and a big shackle, but I rigged a safety line directly from the engine block to our anchor cleat. It is only a single line, so we will move around a bit if it ever comes into play, but better than drifting back onto the reef! I also set an anchor alarm when we went to bed tonight. After that excitement, we cleaned up and went into town. Steve & Ann of Fineline showed us the town which consists of one sand road less than a mile long but crowed with beach bars, gift shops, and restaurants. Most places display their prices in US dollars, but the exchange rate they offer is 1:20 buying and 1:18 (or sometimes even less) for change so we used Limps (official exchange 19.1:1). I had a very passable mojito from a walk-away street bar and Deb had a pina colada, also good. We bought cinnamon buns for morning (but left them there to pick up on our return), and finally decided to eat at this little street side taco stand. He made tacos to order, beef or pork, three for 100L. And they were great! Although he didn't sell drinks, he even ran down the street and got us a couple of beers (cheaper than what we had paid at the bar for happy hour!). After that we picked up our cinnamon buns and took the dink back to the boat. A nice end to a disappointing day.