Day 64, Just another Shitty day in Paradise.
19 May 2012 | French Cay Harbor, Roatan, Honduras, CA
Mark
Friday, May 18. It rained some during the night not enough to do the water tanks much good, but enough to force us to keep the hatch closed. This morning was gray, solid overcast, no wind. It rained off and on. Not a great day for doing much of anything, but not a bad day for not doing much of anything. We read a bit. I filled up the dinghy gas tank from the jerry jug and filled the diesel from jugs then got on the VHF to find out where I could get them refilled from the dinghy I was not anxious to carry 5 x 5 gallon jugs very far. Fantasy Island responded that they had a fuel dock open to the public. Great. That was just around the corner. I dropped Deb of at Brooksy Point to chat with Terry from Niki Wiki who is an avid knitter and I went to Fantasy island. Fortunately, I asked their prices before filling the jugs. They wanted over $7.00US for gasoline and nearly that for diesel! Not today. I thought $6.00/gal for mixed gas was bad on Guanaja. I don't need to buy either gas or diesel until I get back there. Prices on Roatan were supposed to be better. I got back on the VHF and learned that there was another fuel dock down by Barefoot Cay marina, about 2.5 nm away. You do have to go outside the reef for a short distance, but it was real calm today so should be no problem. Wait for it to stop raining again and go. I followed the buoys out just like with the big boat and once outside the reef, paralleled the shore until I saw the entrance to French Harbor (as opposed to French Cay Harbor). It was even better marked with big red/green entrance buoys and high red/green posts marking the channel in. Inside were 100's of shrimp boats. This is a major working port of the island. Off to the left was an inland waterway, sort of like the ICW but deeper, and I followed that down to Barefoot Cay Marina. It was even more up scale than Fantasy Island, but the fuel dock was not their's, it was on a commercial dock across the waterway. Diesel was 83L (~$4.36/gal), much better. And the hoses were on the dock so that I just had to hand up a jug and take it back once it was full. I never had to get out of the dinghy. He also has 10' alongside so it really would be easy to bring a big boat in here to fill up. Fifteen gallons of diesel, 9 gallons of gas (I also topped up the hookah jug) and 1 qt. of 2 cycle oil for 2388L, not a bad deal! On the way back, the swells (2-3') were perfectly aligned with the entrance to French Cay Harbor, so I lined the dinghy up and surfed my way into the harbor. I made it back in such a short time that Deb thought I had given up and come back empty handed. I probably saved $50US over Fantasy Island and had fun doing it on what was an otherwise fairly boring day. Terry had told Deb about this terrific web site for knitters ravelry. Well, I helped Deb get on to it and she surfed for about 3 hours downloading patterns and getting ideas. Then she went on (with a bit of help) to set up an account on Facebook. And then she used Skype to talk to her sister for an hour. I tell you, she's turning into a real computer geek! Amazing what a cloudy day will do. Tomorrow is the Eldon's run (grocery store) and hopefully our hookah part. If so, we will probably depart Sunday. If not, whenever it does get here.