We have one more Bay Island to visit and time is closing in on us. While we might have lingered another few days in West End and we enjoyed our time here, we can’t really imagine how folks stay for weeks. I guess it’s a good thing there are varied anchorages with varied activities and folks with varied interests or we would all be in the same place all the time!

As for us, we needed to move on in order to fit in everything else at the end of this season. It was time to move west. Now that we are moving in the direction of the trade winds, planning is much easier, but we still have to have a look at wind strength, sea state and the timing of what we want to do next. In order for us to have at least a short visit at Utila before crossing to Guatemala (before the next weather system moves through) it was time to go.

It started as a lovely sail with yankee and main – gentle rolls, comfortable tack and right on course. Once we cleared Roatan it got a bit corkscrewy, but we altered course and still enjoyed that blissful feeling of sailing along on the ocean with sun giving us power and wind providing propulsion. The wind was 20 kts aft of the beam and we were on a run. That is absolutely the best feeling, and we were reveling in it.

Well – you know what’s coming.

We gybed carefully (turned the boat so the stern goes through the wind to change direction) north for a couple of miles and then back west again, another controlled gybe north to keep us reasonably on course, and one more gybe west. Oops. What’s wrong with that sail? It’s attached top and bottom but free of the mast in the middle. It was the strangest thing. We hadn’t whipped that sail through the wind – there was no cracking or slamming, but all of a sudden just the top and bottom were attached. We have a loose-footed main and that’s fine, but a loose luff too?? Not good.

We snapped 11 of the sliders holding the mainsail to the mast! The seas were still rolly and we decided not to pull the main down until we got into the harbour so we limped along the rest of the way with the engine on and the injured sail pulled in to centre. Fortunately it is an easy pass through the reef at East Harbour so although we looked funny, there wasn’t undue stress on the main. Once into flat water, Jim managed to haul it down and gather it in. So – one more issue to be dealt with. (The pic is a bit of a cheat –I took it on our crossing to Rio Dulce and the main is down, but I like the pic.)

Although Utila has a reputation for bad holding, we managed to get dug in – well enough anyway – on the first try over on the west side of the harbour – right next to Emerald Seas so we had 2 red maple leaves flying side by side. We were a little weary and discouraged, so after a dinghy ride around the anchorage to say hello to Vibeke and Poul (Pi) and Sharen and John (Sunsations) we were happy to leave further exploring till the next day and enjoy sundowners with Renate and Jim (Emerald Seas). It was a very fine evening with these two Vancouver Island folks.