11 December 1995 Curacao to Guanaja, Honduras (Day 5)
Strange night. The wind settled back to 20 knots and stayed pretty steady – but we still left the reefs in the main sail - just in case.
Typical day, star shots at dawn, listen to “Mistine” for the weather, (The front’s still expected on Tuesday 12th), I have a two hour kip in the morning, Glenys has a two hour kip in the afternoon, plot the Astro position, Glenys makes dinner and we prepare for the night. The boys entertain themselves with Lego, books and the Game Boy – they act just like they are spending the day on the boat in an anchorage. Craig and I have acclimatised to the motion and are OK down below now. Brett has a cast iron stomach and Glenys is somewhere in the middle!
We have had fairly steady 15 knot NE winds all day, with 4 foot seas, so it has been very pleasant today. We have a good routine during the day, but the nights are tedious. It’s getting harder and harder to keep awake on my night watches – I need more than 6 hours sleep per night! It’s fairly cold at night and full oilskins are the preferred apparel. We don’t need jumpers or socks and shoes yet, but the socks are being considered! I spend the night huddled in the corner, reading a book or staring into space, when my eyes hurt too much.
12 December 1995 Curacao to Guanaja, Honduras (Day 6)
The log packed up at about ten pm and I didn’t get it working until nine o’clock in the morning. We had a fairly quiet night with a light 10-15 knot wind from the north east. At two o’clock in the morning, I put on the engine and we motored for 3 hours. At five o’clock, the wind had picked up enough to sail again. We have been to the north of Rocalyn Bank and have been getting some strange currents – sometimes south going, sometimes north going and quite strong as well, giving us up to 30° leeway!
We saw a pod of Atlantic spotted dolphins at breakfast. Then we had a quiet morning and I put up the mizzen sail to give us that little bit extra speed. By midday the clouds had built up. I expect that this is the leading edge of the predicted cold front, which is now forecast to stall and dissipate to the north of us – I hope David on “Mistine” is right! By two o’clock, it was raining and we then had 30 minutes of nil wind with 3 metre waves. I decided to motor for a while.
Glenys and I spent the afternoon “brain storming” what our new company is going to do. We’ve now decided that, if we get non-resident status, we will go straight back to the UK from the Azores. That way we can put Glencora on the market and get on with the rest of our lives.
Before dark, we were getting the occasional 4 metre wave and could see squalls upwind, so I dropped the mizzen and off we went.
13 December 1995 Curacao to Guanaja, Honduras (Day 7)
A very varied night with 20+ knots in some squalls and nothing in some places. Just before midday, we started our last leg towards Guanaja. At two o’clock, we poled the jib out to starboard and ran downwind. We managed to dodge some squalls and got soaked in others!
Morning greeted us with a heavy rain squall and we all sat having our breakfast in oilskins. The rest of the day remained dry with a low layer of stratus and the occasional squall lines which kindly avoided us. The wind stayed light and we rocked and rolled. At five pm, we had only 200 miles to go, but I’m frustrated by our slow progress - I expect to spend another 3 nights at sea and arrive first thing on Saturday morning.
We were getting low on our supply of tuna, so I put out the fishing line and was rewarded by a 5lb Dorado – I put the fishing line away again! It would be nice if we could always catch a fish on demand, we’ve been eating tuna for 7 days now – I would love a bit of chicken. The constant rolling is wearing me out (1 every 5 seconds!) Everything takes 2-3 times as long as it should and it will be nice to stand on solid ground again. Having said that, we are fairly content in our little microcosm and could keep going for a few more weeks without any problems. It’s nice to be able to sit at the chart table and write this without feeling sick. The GPS continues to work, but I’m handling it with kid gloves and we have left it switched on since the problem.
14 December 1995 Curacao to Guanaja, Honduras (Day 8)
A quiet night last night. We started off with the jib poled out to starboard, but at dawn, I gybed the jib to port because we were 6 miles to the left of the Rhumb line. Glenys is finding it increasingly difficult to wake me up for my watches – last night, she actually had to come down and shake me. She also has to keep an eye on me because I say “OK” and then go back to sleep!
The wind has finally veered to the ENE, so we were able to pole the genoa out to starboard. I haven’t bothered to rig up the twin running sails because it’s a hassle de-rigging it all if the wind shifts and there are still loads of ominous looking clouds around. We had a quiet uneventful day.
By the afternoon it was totally overcast with high and low level cloud layers. I just managed to get a sextant shot of the sun in a small break in the lower clouds, albeit a very fuzzy one! The fix came out pretty good though. It amazes me that I can get a good fix with a rushed sextant shot in bad conditions. At dinner time, we had 75 miles to go, so we should arrive first thing in the morning which will be great. I’m looking forward to a bottle of champagne and a tootle on the old clarinet. I’ve not been motivated enough to get my clarinet out, besides the fact that Glenys sleeps in the afternoon and I sleep in the mornings.
15 December 1995 Curacao to Guanaja, Honduras (Day 9)
At about nine o’clock, we ran out of wind and had to start motoring. By midnight, it had started to rain but still no wind. It was very eerie motoring along in the pitch black with rain hammering down. We were travelling too fast and had to reduce the engine revs down to 1000 rpm.
By dawn, we were about 10 miles from our way point. Fortunately, it had stopped raining and I could concentrate on our landfall. I used the radar to double check the GPS. At six o’clock, I could just make out the shape of the island and started to see the odd light. We arrived just as dawn came and slowly made our way into the anchorage. I must admit to feelings of euphoria that the journey was safely over. I think it all went well and we proved that we will be able to cross the Atlantic by ourselves.
We put up the dinghy, had bacon and eggs and went to clear in. It cost us $30US for customs and $40US for immigration – I’m sure that the immigration guy ripped us off, but what can you do?
The main town is a curious place, being built on a small island. The whole town is on stilts with open ditches running everywhere. I assume that these ditches flood at high tide. The average height of the locals is about 5’3”, so I feel like a giant! The houses are very close together and the ditches act as a sewer – I can’t imagine that it’s a very nice place to live.
We motored over to El Bight and had a quiet afternoon. Glenys dozed while Brett and I went for a snorkel. “Kalida” turned up and came for a beer or two (they arrived yesterday). We cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate our safe landfall.
16 December 1995 El Bight, Guanaja
There’s a two hour time difference here – we had to put the clocks back two hours. We all slept like logs, but the boys were up and about at six o’clock - their internal clocks haven’t adjusted.
There are lots of annoying “no-see-ums” here, which bite from dawn to dusk at which time the mosquitoes take over. The “no-see-ums” bite is sharp and hurts, but no swelling. We have resigned ourselves to wearing insect repellent all day. It’s very peculiar the way the locals build houses over water. By the anchorage, there is a bar built about 50 metres from a spit of land that could quite easily have been cleared to build a bar. There is also a house that has a pigsty built over the water! Is it the easy sanitation, the price of land or the no-see-ums that cause this strange phenomenon?
I’m amazed by the speed that Craig has improved his reading. Suddenly he’s reading “proper” books by himself. We went for a dive with Derek and Alison from “Kalida”. We took Glencora out to the east of South West Cay and picked up a dive mooring. Good wreck dive with lots of big Grouper. We went back to El Bight and had a quiet afternoon.
In the evening, we went to the bar and had a few beers with the other cruisers. Craig and Brett were having races along the dock, Brett came in for a drink and Craig stayed outside “practising.” One of the local ladies came running in and said that Craig had fallen in the water. I rushed out and found him in the water at the end of the dock, screaming for Brett and trying to climb up a dinghy painter. I dragged him out and found out that he had been running so fast that he couldn’t stop and had run straight off the end of the dock! He was a bit scared but OK.
17 December 1995 El Bight to Northwest Cay, Guanaja
A bit of a hangover this morning. We decided to motor 3 miles to an isolated cay. What a beautiful little spot! We are anchored about 30 metres from the shore with a reef ahead of us. Nice and breezy – hopefully we won’t be troubled by bugs here. Glenys and I went for a dive and caught a small 1lb lobster.
We went for a walk on the island and circumnavigated it in 20 minutes. Brett and Craig insisted on taking a rope to make a swing. We couldn’t find a suitable tree, so Glenys ended up lugging the rope around the island for nothing. Brett found a small octopus in very shallow water and I managed to scoop it out onto the beach. It squirted ink at us and hid under a log. They can’t half move fast on land! There was a salt water lagoon in the middle of the island and millions of sand flies on the seaweed at the water’s edge. As dark came, the wind picked up to 20 knots and we were veering about. I put out a bit more chain but couldn’t relax – it was pitch black and difficult to see where we were in relation to the island. There was nothing we could do so we went to bed. We are still tired from the passage from Curacao, so it wasn’t difficult to sleep.
18 December 1995 Northwest Cay to El Bight, Guanaja
I woke up at dawn and watched a spectacular sunrise through the coconut palms on the island. I spent the time before breakfast, working out our timetable up to the end of March, when we want to be in Key West. It looks like a fairly hectic 3 months! We are going to spend Christmas somewhere in Roatan, so we need to leave soon.
We did school work and then motored back to El Bight. I’d been told that we could get water from a tap on a dock, so I did four runs with jerry cans and filled up with water. Glenys took the opportunity of a free tap and did some washing by hand. We upped anchor and went round to the settlement to clear out of Guanaja, send a fax to Gareth and fill up with fuel. We then went to El Bight, tidied up and went to the bar for a few beers. There are about 8 boats in the anchorage, so it was a pleasant evening.
We retired to Glencora for dinner. I wouldn’t say that we are getting blasé about lobster, but we had lobster pizza tonight, and very nice it was too! Glenys is on a campaign to improve our diction; every time we drop a “T” she pounces on us. I must admit that she’s right – we use too many “gonna” and “wanna’s”.
A couple of people have said that the reason the locals build out on the water is because of the sand flies, and I can believe it! The initial bites are annoying, but the itching that results three days later is awful. The bites end up as bumps with small red scabs on top. I don’t know if the scabs are caused by further attacks by the little bastards or whether I’ve scratched them – but it’s excruciating!
19 December 1995 El Bight to Isla Barbareta, Guanaja
I got up early and found out that there’s a front due in the area tomorrow. Today is a beautiful day so we got ourselves ready to sail. We motored out, past the settlement, on a heading of 125°M to avoid a reef that is about a mile offshore. When we arrived at deep water, we turned SW and crept around the outside of the reef and headed for Barbareta. We caught a 5lb Dorado on the way.
We anchored behind a small reef off a scruffy beach. The wind is from the SW, so there’s a bit of a chop coming into the anchorage, but that should swing to the NW as the front approaches. After lunch, Brett and I went snorkelling on the reef – a bit boring apart from the fun we had chasing a tiny lobster and we spotted a large-eyed toadfish, which I thought was very exciting! We had a beautiful sunset with a very clear sky.
20 December 1995 Isla Barbareta, Guanaja
It was a miserable, overcast day with intermittent rain. We did school work in the morning and in the afternoon made a Christmas tree, some paper chains and started a Christmas frieze. I did some clarinet practice today, as opposed to just playing tunes, and I felt so much better for doing it. Recently I’ve just been practicing tunes and my technique has deteriorated. I must do proper practice with long notes, scales and exercises.
The sand fly bites on my legs were even worse today. I was driven mad and ended up putting long trousers on with the bottoms tucked into socks – I haven’t worn socks for years!