After staying a few extra days in French Cay Harbour while we waited out the Norther that came through with strong winds that clocked around through S, W, N and back to E, it was time to head west. A whole fleet of boats arrived from West End (a bad place to be in W winds) before the front, and a whole fleet departed this morning in light winds for various points – Guanaja, Cayos Cochinos, Utila and a couple of us to West End Roatan.

We visited here on a road trip with Liam one windy overcast day last year and wondered why anyone would want to come here, and we visited again by car on the weekend, and although it was sunny, we thought it was much too commercialized and urban for us. But – how can you say you have explored Roatan without checking it out? And many of the folks we’ve met, spend weeks here. So … off to West End. We had the main up but it was unfortunately a motoring kind of a day as we came along the south side of the island. By the time we turned the corner, we had 12 knots and might have sailed, but we had only about 2 miles to go so we didn’t bother unfurling a foresail.

The Pavlidis book gave a waypoint and said to turn 90 degrees T from there. We had another set of waypoints but weren’t sure of their validity. So we were cruising slowly up along the reef, trying to spot the gap which might or might not be marked, when a dive boat pointed the way. Sure enough, as we peered through the binoculars, we could see 2 stakes. The dive boat captain yelled, “Just go straight through between them!” so that’s what we did. Our pattern is for Jim to go forward with the binoculars and his polarized sunglasses to watch for deep water and navigational aids. I plant my feet, take a deep breath, start a track on the chartplotter and steer us in. For some reason I kept losing sight of these stakes – as they blended in with boats and background, and there didn’t look to me to be much of a gap in the breaking waves but sure enough, there was. It was narrow but short and with at least 10 feet of depth. Once through, we looked for the Clorox bottles that we had heard were marking some of the moorings that once had balls on them. Anchoring is an iffy proposition here in grass over sand, so we preferred a ball, and we were in luck. We spotted one beside Gloria Maris and as we motored by to take a look at it, Tom called out that it was a good one and even popped over to pick it up and hand it to Jim. Nice!

There are many moorings here – most of them good solid ones. About 3 or 4 years ago, the park installed secure moorings marked with big balls. Cruisers could rent them for a fee – half to the park and half to the town. Within the last couple of years, the local mayor (a businessman who owns a nearby resort and a few others around the island) decided he didn’t want to have moorings here. The word we have heard is that he says didn’t want dog owners coming ashore and walking on the beach. Folks feel it is perhaps more likely that he wasn’t getting any personal benefit from the fees. He had the balls removed although the moorings stayed on the bottom. Folks started diving down to find the mooring lines and using them anyway because it is safer than anchoring, and now some of them are informally marked again. We understand there is a now a new mayor who favours reinstalling the balls.

While there are many dive, snorkel and fishing boats all along the reef, the mooring field is away from the main strip of the town and not at all noisy. There are fewer little boats crisscrossing here than there are in French Cay harbour. And the long reef is just behind us – short dinghy rides to go snorkeling, and some areas are even swimmable right off the boats.

We dinghied ashore to the weekly happy Hour on the Beach and were delighted to meet many of our neighbours – Terry and Dave (Sylvester), Susan and Jerry (Vida Dulce) Sue Ann (land based and the “concierge” of the area) and her guests, Darren and Brett, and Tom and Liliana (Gloria Maris). This is a much more low key spot – no morning net, no organized activities – but friendly folks, great opportunities to explore and water that is gin clear. I think perhaps our planned 2 or 3 night stay might stretch to 4 or 5!