Contribution To The Karma Bank
25 April 2017 | West End Roatan, Honduras
Susan / a clear sunny breezy day, 87 degrees F
Yesterday late afternoon a monohull arrived in the anchorage. Single-hander older man, which is not unusual for the Caribbean. He looks around at us three boats anchored and deciding "we're lonely" he drops his anchor close in. Elina & Greg were on Vida Dulce so they got to see the "Susan: Big Anchorage, Go Somewhere Else!" communication with waving arms, pointing arm, shouting, etc. When that didn't deter him, Jerry joined me on the deck to shout that he needs to go farther down the anchorage / mooring field. It worked; he anchored a decent distance from us.
This afternoon, I look out & around since the winds have picked up and notice this same monohull is not where he was, and it's not because of the wind shift. I watch some more. Moving slowly toward the reef? Maybe. Watch some more. Yep. Slowly at first then pretty quickly moving toward the reef. I mention this to Jerry who immediately readies himself and the dinghy to rush over to assist while I make 2 radio calls, one on the local hailing channel and one on channel 16. After all, if we were dragging and didn't notice, we'd want someone to alert us on the radio or failing a noticeable response, a knock on the hull.
We speed over. He's sitting in the cockpit. Completely unaware his boat is dragging until we alert him & he looks around. Oh, he says. There's a language challenge as he speaks little English and no Spanish. Not sure what language he speaks; didn't sound to be any we do. We gesture to him that we'll help him onto a mooring; pointing at a couple of the white floats & saying mooring several times slowly. This is for his benefit and ours. Forecasted winds are really going to pick up to literally blowing nearly a gale this weekend from the SE and we'd like him to be settled in a parallel direction to us, not in front of us. He is happy to agree to our help in moving. We hover around while he gets his anchor up; it's not fouled. Hhuuumm. He motors over to where our dinghy is now waiting at a mooring and as he eases up as to not run over us I place the mooring line w/ float on the bow of his boat. He rushes forward, grabs it and attaches the lines to a cleat. I think he thanks us. He has some work to do to completely secure the lines yet with our Good Samaritan work done, we head back to Vida Dulce to resume our afternoon activities.