Captain's Log

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Part 2:  March to July, 2006 -  Honduras

It’s now Easter Week and we are having guests for a few days.  Our good friends Martha and Phil and Martha’s brother William are coming to join us and we are really excited to have them.  Martha and Phil are from La Ceiba, Honduras and William was born in La Ceiba but lives in New Orleans.  He has come back to Honduras to visit his family.  They arrive Monday afternoon on the Utila Princess, the ferry from La Ceiba to the island of Utila.  We pick them up and bring them back to the boat.  That evening we grill up some of that wonderful Wahoo that we caught a couple of days ago.  It was wonderful and our guests were great fun.

The next couple of days are spent exploring the island and swimming in the wonderful waters of East Bay, Utila.  Lots of good conversation, fun, food and drink, but our time with Martha, Phil and William must come to an end.  William needs to get back to La Ceiba and see more family members before he heads back to New Orleans on Saturday.  We take then to the last ferry on Wednesday afternoon and bid them farewell.

The next two days we are back out looking for whale sharks again, but unfortunately we do not spot any.

April 13th is Dave, from Odyssea’s, birthday so we plan a party for that evening aboard Chickcharnie.  Rosie loves to entertain and we all have a wonderful time celebrating Dave’s birthday.

It’s Good Friday and the island is just bursting with tourists and lots of parties and really loud music.  There are three places around the shoreline of the bay that have their speakers pointed out over the bay.  The music goes all night long and they shut it down at 6:00AM.  This has been going on all week and has begun to get the best of us so we decide to leave even though we wanted to stay and go to Easter Sunday Sunrise services at one of the local churches.  Lone Star Love and Odyssea decide to move to the west end of the island where there is a nice anchorage and the small group of cays known as Water Cays.  Chickcharnie departs the same time and heads to La Ceiba to make their boat ready to store till next season.  It is so quiet and pleasant at the west end or Utila and we find the Easter Sunday services at Water Cays and go there instead.

We spend twelve days anchored at the west end of Utila enjoying the cays, the people and the beautiful water.  We spent lots of time snorkeling and fishing with Dave and Jan from Odyssea.  Sharing sundowners, dinners and lots of good stories as Dave and Jan count down their days when they have to go back to La Ceiba to store their boat for the season and head to their home in Illinois. 

We see them off on April 26th and we pull anchor to head back to East Bay to await Phil and Martha who are coming Friday for a long weekend and then we will sail to La Ceiba on Monday as Martha needs to return to work on Tuesday and Lone Star Love needs to re-provision after being out sailing around for two months.  Lots of swimming and hanging out around Utila then Monday we are off to La Ceiba.  We spend time with Martha and Phil while we are in La Ceiba and do all of our shopping and boat chores.  We celebrate Judy’s birthday and the next Monday we are headed back to Roatan.

We want to go to Jonesville where there will be testing for Ham licensing for the Single Sideband Radio and  Greg is wanting to take the test so that he can get his General License.  The winds are not in our favor that day so we end up down island at French Harbor.  When the winds change and the seas settle a bit and we were able to sail to Jonesville a few days later.

There are lots of boats at Jonesville, several are there preparing to take the test as well.  Queen Mary, Camper Down, Bella Donna, Rose of Sharon, Esperanza and Mesqua Ukee.  Also Paul and Mary Margaret from AngelHeart and Cheri and Sandy from Namaste’, both Paul and Sandy want to take the test along with Greg so all the guys spend time each day studying together.  Hole in the Wall is buzzing every day with lots of boaters sharing stories and having a good time. 

While we are there and all the studying and test preparation is happening we also have some celebrating to do.  Gene and Brenda from Queen Mary are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary and Tom from Mesqua Ukee is celebrating his 50th birthday all on the same day.  These occasions can not pass without a party.  Saturday night we organize a pot-luck at Hole in the Wall to mark the special day.  Gene and Brenda are both wonderful musicians and they bring their instruments along with Dave and Donna from Bella Donna and a great party is going with great music.  Lyette, Tom’s wife from Mesqua Ukee is also a wonderful pastry chef and makes a fabulous cake to mark this big occasion.  Hole in the Wall is rocking with fun, food, music and friends, thanks to Bob who has such a great place to hang out at. 

We are still at Hole in the Wall, Jonesville.  May 24th arrives faster then the guys want it to, its test day and all three, Paul, Sandy and Greg pass with flying colors.  While the guys are taking their test the resident dog “Pokey” of Hole in the Wall is giving birth to twelve puppies.  This is a big day all the way around.  That evening we all gather for a “Happy Hour” at Hole in the Wall to celebrate not only the passing of the test, but Pokey’s puppies.   

One afternoon we stop by Mesqua Ukee to visit Tom and Lyette.  Tom tells us he is suffering with a problem with his foot and that they hate the thought of going to the Rio Dulce River and leaving the boat there to travel four hours to Guatemala City so that Tom can have some surgery on his foot.  We suggest contacting some doctors in La Ceiba and I tell them I will get a list from Martha, who knows lots of doctors.  Tom and Lyette think that would be great since they could stay at Lagoon Marina with the boat and not have to travel so far as they would if they went to Guatemala City.  Martha emails me some names and Tom and Lyette are headed to La Ceiba.

During all of our conversation with Tom we discuss a new type of freezer system that Tom has in their boat that he designed and installed that uses far less Amp hour of energy to power it.  He has our attention.  Our system works great, but it takes over 400 Amp hours a day to run it.  Tom’s system should take less the 100 Amp hours a day.  We asked Tom that if he ends up having the surgery on his foot in La Ceiba if we could come there and get him to instruct Greg how to build it while he recovers from his surgery.  Tom agrees and so we will wait till we hear from that Tom is able to get around a bit before we head to La Ceiba.  This will work out perfect as we would like to see Phil and Martha again before they leave for a month long vacation to the states.

We set sail for La Ceiba on June 5th and spend a few days with Phil and Martha before they fly to the states on June 9th.  Then it’s hard at work removing all the old freezer equipment and shopping for all the parts to put the new system together.  Once all the old is out and the new is in and the adjustments are made we are off again for Roatan.  We were at Lagoon Marina for twenty-two days transforming our freezer into a more energy efficient system.

As we arrive at French Harbor we notice the new freezer system is running but not cooling.  We shut down the system and give it some time to settle and cool and then we started it up and it worked OK.  When we entered through the pass in the reef the boat was sideways to the seas so we were rolling back and forth.  We contacted Tom and he said that he had encountered this problem in the past and that he had a fix for the problem that would only take about 3 or 4 hours to correct.  He, however at this time is working very hard on in his rehab program for his foot and can not work on the freezer, so we are just hanging out in the beautiful bights on the south shore of Roatan.

Our next move from French Harbor was to go to Carib Bight, just a few miles to the east of French Harbor.  This is a beautiful bight with only four homes and only one of those has someone living in it full time the rest are vacation homes.  The one home that is occupied year around is called “Castaways” and is owned by some friends of yours, Marcia and Dennis.  They have made Roatan their home for the last 8 years.  We enjoy having them to the boat for sundowners and dinner as well as us spending time with them at their home which sits high up on the hillside overlooking the bight as well as Lone Star Love.  What a beautiful view and a great place to watch the sun go down behind the mountains of Roatan.

After a week we decide to move to the next bight which is Bodden Bight where Jonesville and Hole in the Wall are located.  It is only one mile and the move only takes us 30 minutes.  We are doing these moves very carefully as to not get the boat into a rolling side to side situation that the freezer doesn’t like. 

We like to anchor in front of Larry’s home in this bight.  We met Larry the first time we came here about two years ago.  He is from Canada, came here on his 70 foot power boat, bought a piece of property on a point in the bight and named it Woodside Marina.  It’s not like a marina that you would think of.  It has one huge dock, 70 feet long that use to accommodate Larry’s boat named the M/V Silver Spring.  She was a wooden boat and Larry had lived on her for 13 years.  One day he decided to build a house, use everything out of the Silver Spring that he could use and strip everything else out of her down to the wooden hull.  The Silver Spring was starting to have lots of rotting in the wooded hull and more then Larry wanted to deal with, so when he got everything striped out that could possible be of use he sank her right at the dock.  The water at his dock is about 16 feet deep and you can look at the bottom and see the shell of the wooden hull.  It is now the home to many fish and there is still enough depth at the dock to take a 6 foot draft boat in with room to spare.  It sounds like a sad ending to such a grant vessel, but not really because Larry’s home is the Silver Spring.  The galley became the kitchen in the house.  The main salon furniture became his living area.  His main sleeping cabin became his bedroom in his home.  The water tanks from the boat became the rain water storage tanks at the house.  The engines were sold to other fishing boats.  Everything was reused.  The only thing that went to the bottom of the sea is the wooded shell.

We like the Jonesville area so well that when Judy goes back to Houston in August and September we will put Lone Star Love at Woodside Marina.  We will be the only boat there on that big dock.

So for how we are making small moves in gentle seas till we get word that Tom’s foot has mended enough for us to go back to Lagoon Marina to have him make the adjustments to the system.  What a great place to hang out and wait.