One down two to go
13 March 2019 | Turneffe Atoll
Paul Barker
After the engine was shut down, we were sailing again. However the skipper 👩✈️now decided to call for assistance (against my opinion but I'm only crew). After about an hour the Honduran navy turned up in a little boat and took us into tow, but not before reversing into Judy's newly painted boat twice. Next they set off like a bat out of hell almost ripping the cleats out of the front of the boat ⛵️, they took us all the way to the pontoon, where we tied up. The navy personnel were very friendly but thorough with all the paperwork. It was past 02:00 before they left saying they would be back at 07:00. When they came back they took our passports and took more photographs of them and us, even more questions were fired at us.
In the morning the navy kindly sent 2 mechanics to help with the engine, they replaced the damaged fuel line which was so brittle it crumbled to the touch. As I was replacing the steps I then noticed some sparks low down, this turned out to be the alternator touching a loosely fitted power lead. They said we were lucky not to set on fire 🔥, all down to poor diligence from the staff at RAM in Guatemala.
At this time Lukas decided that he was going to bail out and leave the boat⛵️, but because of this the whole process with the Honduran officials changed, they gave us a car with a driver and 3 armed guards. We were driven all over the town to immigration, Port control then customs. We were interviewed by the national news paper 📝 and the local tv station, the bad bit about this was they printed our passports and the numbers for all to see. (I worry about identity theft)
The skipper and I set sail at 07:00 the next morning for a small reef near Belize 🇧🇿. On the way I caught, with all my new kit, an 80 cm 7 kilogram mahi-mahi, which I also filleted and cooked off with some olive oil and curry powder, it was a good meal. We dropped the anchor in calming waters. In the morning everything had changed, it was now blowing 27 knots and the waves were up to 2 metres high. I went forward to get the anchor up using our newly fitted windlass, which pulled up 5 metres of chain then violently let it all go again, after 40 minutes of terrifying work I was knackered and no nearer getting the chain and anchor up. ( you don't want to be any where near a chain when it lets go, it's so dam quick and vicious it's frightening). The skipper made the decision and told me to cut the chain and anchor away. Now this is a huge decision and one I would not have liked to make.
The only way to go now was south back to Honduras 🇭🇳 where we knew there was a safe place to tie the boat ⛵️ and get there in the day. (I was so tired I could have slept 💤 all day)we got permission to tie up without going through the long immigration process again.
In the morning we had to leave at 04:45 but the winds were completely out of the wrong direction so we had to use the motor. The decision was to now return back to RAM marina for repairs, it took us 12 uneventful hours to get back,